Hey Up!

[caddyman]

It seems that all your favourite carols were originally sung to folk tunes, according to this article on the BBC News website...

The Christmas carol While Shepherds Watched their Flocks was originally sung to the tune of folk song On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at, an academic claims.

I can imagine that intellectually, but what I can't do, because my brain rebels at the thought, is actually insert the lyric into the tune. I can hum 'Ilkley Moor' and I can hum While Shepherds', but not with the lyrics transposed in my brain. I think it is hard wired to prevent it; a defence mechanism, perhaps.

In the meantime, here is a morsel of news for pax_draconis and other aficionados of matters octopodal. It's nothing to do with Christmas, but it is amusing. Octopus snatches coconut and runs...

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

This is starting to turn into I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, isn't it....

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

He he.

I just reports what I finds!

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

I can get the first three lines but I have to sing it to the "proper" tune first so I can remember the words and then force my brain to do Ilkley moor. I think someone has been pulling his plonker on this one and he has been in too many yorkshire pubs asking the sort of questions that would set himself up to be shot down.

[kathbad]

I thought that when they had it performed on The Today Programme this morning...

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

Marvellous !

[pax-draconis.livejournal.com]

I believe I will let my icon do my talking for me.

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

*hums to self*

No, it doesn't. Where does the chorus repetition of Ilkley Moor show up in When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks? One too many pints of fine Yorkshire ale, I suspect.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

I have heard that the tunes for many a traditional hymn came from old (and possibly a bit bawdy) drinking songs, which is jolly ironic when one thinks of such innocent fare as "Away in a Manger" and "All Things Bright & Beautiful."

[kathbad]

I could not put the two together either - it was on The Today Programme this morning, and really works, although I still cannot do the words of one song to the tune of another...

[ash1977law.livejournal.com]

Living with an ethnographer as I do I have come to realise that when an expert says "This tune was traditionally sung to X in Lancashire" you have to translate to "I met a guy in a pub and he told me that his grand-dad said that the song used to be sung like this da daaa da daaaa da da daaa, but he only told me that after I promised to buy him his tenth pint."