Abdul Abulbul Amir

Strange the things that rattle around in a person's head. Today I found mine inhabited by Abdul Abulbul Amir - the full story is here, along with the words, which are rather good of their kind and go to the tune of, well, Abdul Abulbul Amir. The reason I know this song is that among the strange miscellany of books in my boyhood home was The Scottish Students' Song Book, a great favourite of my father's, though he had never been either Scottish or a student (still less a singer, but he enjoyed himself). In fact, the songbook ranges far beyond Scottish balladry and whimsy, taking in drinking songs (Down Among the Dead Men, Little Brown Jug, Come Landlord Fill the Flowing Bowl and many more), negro spirituals (and unspirituals, like The Camptown Races), comic narratives (Riding Down From Bangor is another I recall), novelty singalongs like Funiculi Funicula, and the inevitable Gaudeamus Igitur (it is a students' songbook after all). It also contains some beautiful love songs - Drink to Me Only (words by Ben Jonson), Passing By (Herrick), My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose (ye ken who)... These are ones of which some fragment stays in my memory. Heaven knows what became of the book. I rather wish I still had it.