I don’t know exactly when it switched over. Maybe 75 years ago? A century? I’m not in the mood for much research today, so I’ll just wing it. Many, many years ago, artists decided they didn’t want to make art anymore. They started making blobs and splotches and women with their nose on the side of their heads. Luckily for us, illustrators took up the slack. There’s more art in a pinup calendar than a modern art museum. Among the many things I’m grateful for today, illustrators like Leyendecker are right up there. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
I remember Columbus Day because I used to play music in a hundred and one bands anyone that would have me and try to make money to eat and get cigarettes and I don’t smoke and there still was never enough money and I played at a tee-totaling biker association party for two members’ wedding not gay a man and a woman that arrived on a motorcycle with the woman I think wearing a white Wedding Dress and no helmet and we played for one hundred sober bikers and ninety-nine of them were like accountants and one was like a serial murderer but they all looked exactly the same so you had to assume they all would kill you if they got the chance instead of the more likely thing that they’d do your taxes if you asked nice and I never played Born To Be Wild for a Wedding Song before and the bride’s father was in jail I think so she had to dance with the groom twice and the whole thing was held at the Italian-American Club on Gano Street in Providence but everybody calls it Guano Street for a joke haha and it’s a real long time ago but it might have been the Portuguese-American Club I don’t remember but I do remember it was Columbus Day and I went into the bar to get away from the sober biker accountants and that one serial murderer that were in the function room and it didn’t matter if it was the Italian-American Club or the Portuguese-American Club or the Knights Of Columbus Hall haha that would be funny but I don’t really remember but I distinctly remember a guy with a knife a real knife not a just a knife a dagger that came to a perfect point and didn’t fold or look like you could do anything wholesome with it it just looked one hundred percent like it was designed and made to gut a bass player and that guy held that knife right under my chin and explained to me in Portuguese that Cristobal Colon was Portuguese and don’t you forget it and my Spanish was very sketchy and Portuguese sounds like Russian to me not Spanish anyway but believe me I understood every damn word he said and I advise you all to answer the question did you know Cristobal Colon was Portuguese in the affirmative at all times.
I’ll Tell Me Ma is about the most Irish thing I can think of. Delivered by a Kelly family is just spiking the football, or maybe hammerin’ the sliotar home, or something:
I’ll Tell Me Ma is one of those things that’s so old and ubiquitous that it’s listed as traditional. All sorts of people have adopted it, and it’s common to change the lyrics to accommodate whatever locale you’re in. Most references to it use Belfast. The lyrics expand and contract a bit. It’s an easy singsong doggerel to improvise in, if you have a mind. The important part is the chorus:
I’ll tell me ma when I come home
the boys won’t leave the girls alone
they pull me hair and stole my comb
well that’s alright till I come home
She is handsome she is pretty
she’s the belle of Belfast city
she’s a courtin’ one two three
please won’t you tell me who is (s)he
It’s a good song to jump rope to, and many do, or did, anyway. There was a children’s game that went with it, too. Everyone stands in a circle, with one girl in the center. They sing a verse, and repeat the chorus, and at the “who is (s)he?”, the child in the center points out another to take their place, and the next verse is sung. Charming.
Of course the definitive version of the song is Van Morrison with the Chieftains, because of course it is. There are fewer cute bairns in the screencap of the Chieftains video, so we opened with the Kellys.
When I was a little kid, my older sister and her friends knew all sorts of singing and dancing things like this one. They’d skip rope and clap hands and dance in a circle in the schoolyard at recess. I wonder, is that all gone now? What’s the modern version? Do the girls go directly from diapers to a stripper pole and twerking? Do Maries still have weddings? And has anyone made Van Morrison smile since 1987?
An Irishman is feeling unwell. His long-suffering wife demands that he go to the doctor and get himself sorted out once and for all. So he goes. The doctor gives him a good going over. He’s a bit of a mess. The doctors says, “Your liver is like a sandbag, Michael, and your kidneys are on holiday somewhere. Your eyesight is failing, and your heart skips more beats than a scratched record. Your skin is sallow, and your hair is limp. You’re a sorry sight overall, and if changes aren’t made, you’re a gone gosling.”
So Michael thinks about his predicament a bit, and rubs his nubbly chin, and says, “What’s the cause of all these maladies, doctor?”
“Michael, it’s alcohol, and alcohol alone that’s the root of all your troubles.”
“Thank Jayzuz, doctor. Now I can go home and tell my wife she’s been wrong all these years. She always claims it’s my fault.”
Tag: holidays
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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