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-Francis Bacon
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The Squirrel by William Cowper Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollow'd deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm, And anger insignificantly fierce. Related Posts:It's my niece's second birthday and I painted some wheeled wooden animals, then added hooks & eyes to make them into a pull toy for her. Of course I got a book to go with it: Speaking of farms, Old MacDonald had one. (How's that for a segue, eh?) The song Old MacDonald Had A Farm is a pretty old one, having its origins in- believe it or not- opera. In 1706 Thomas d'Urfey wrote an opera called The Kingdom of The Birds or Wonders of The Sun. This title doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and by all accounts the opera was a bit of a dud. It did, however, contain a song entitled In The Fields In Frost and Snows which has some familiar phrasing in it: In the Fields in Frost and Snows, Watching late and early; There I keep my Father's Cows, There I Milk 'em Yearly: Booing here, Booing there, Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo, We defy all Care and Strife, In a Charming Country-Life. The song continues, changing animals in every verse as in the modern version of it, though the tune is different than the one we're all used to- and bad; the big problem with d'Urfey's operatic efforts was that he wrote the music as well as the lyrics and he was crap at it. It's possible that d'Urfey adapted an existing traditional song to In The Fields, but there're no references to it existing before this time so we'll have to let him claim it- which he did, putting a fuller version of it in his 1719 book Wit and Mirth, or Pills To Cure Melancholy (Vol. II). D'Urfey was apparently fond of giving his works multiple titles. Thomas d'Urfey was a noted 17th century English playwright, poet, and songster, despite his French sounding name. In actual fact, his surname was Durfey but he took to styling himself as d'Urfey, no doubt to lend credence to his rather dubious claim of being descended from French Huguenots. The truth was that ol' Tom was born in Devonshire and was employed as a lowly scribe until he took to writing plays for the theatre and turned out to have a talent for it (just not for composing music). In addition, he was such a personable and witty character that he quickly became a must-have at fashionable parties, even amongst the elite, eventually becoming pals with King Charles II and his younger brother, the future King James II. This probably accounts for him trying to jack up his ancestry a wee bit. A lot of his plays were political satires which invariably portrayed the monarchy in a good light; d'Urfey obviously knew on which side his bread was buttered. Most of the rest of his work was broad- and rather bawdy- humour (Jonathan Swift, his contemporary, wasn't a fan, referring to his work as "excrement"). It certainly wasn't high-minded; a lot of his Wit and Mirth- which takes up six volumes- would be unrepeatable in polite company; a couple titles of his are The Fart and The Lusty Young Smith, to give you an idea of his writing style. Much of the literary class (like Swift) despised his work, but the public loved his saucy humour; an exasperated Alexander Pope once acknowledged this in a letter: "Dares any Man speak against him who has given so many Men to eat? So may it be said of Mr. Durfey to his Detractors: What? Dares any one despise him, who has made so many Men drink? Alas, Sir! This is a Glory which neither you nor I must ever pretend to." D'urfey recognised this himself, commenting "The Town may damn me for a poet, but they sing my Songs for all that." So I suppose we should be grateful that Old MacDonald turned out to be so wholesome... it certainly could have gone in another direction entirely. In any case, d'Urfey's bucolic ditty gained wide circulation amongst the public, gradually being modified and sung differently in different regions of the British Isles over the course of a couple hundred years. In the 1880's, it was being sung in Manchester under the name The Farmyard Song; in 1906 it was documented as being sung as Father's Wood I-O. In 1908, folk song archivist Cecil Sharp collected a version of the song in London entitled The Farmyard which starts out: Up was I on my father's farm On a May day morning early; Feeding of my father's cows On a May day morning early, With a moo moo here and a moo moo there, Here a moo, there a moo, Here a pretty moo. Six pretty maids come and gang a-long o' me To the merry green fields of the farm-yard. In 1917, Frederick Thomas Nettleingham published a book of "soldiers' songs, marching melodies, and rude rhymes" entitled Tommy's Tunes which was meant to be given to the soldiers at the Front, to cheer and encourage them. It included a version of the song which was quite close to the one we sing today, except that the farmer was referred to as "Old Macdougal" instead of MacDonald. There was also a rather odd version kicking around the Ozark region of the States, recorded by a folk song collector in 1922 which went something like this: Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho, And on this mule there were two ears, he-hi-he-hi-ho. With a flip-flop here and a flip-flop there, And here a flop and there a flop and everywhere a flip-flop Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho. However it came about, one way or another we eventually ended up with the ubiquitous Old MacDonald Had A Farm, which every child has, I daresay, sung during their formative years. But not just children; the song has been performed at various times by such artists as Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and- as unlikely as it may seem- Elvis Presley. The earliest recording of it in existence is from 1925, by the Sam Patterson Trio (Sam Patterson was a friend/collaborator with Scott Joplin). Here's that version: And here's the Elvis version, from his 1967 movie Double Trouble because heck, why not?
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