Thursday 18 March 2010

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.

13 comments:

  1. Just went to abebooks.com and typed in Scottish Students Songbook. There are 13 copies available.

    http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=The+scottish+students+songbook&x=0&y=0

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  2. Thanks Magpie. Good to know it's still around...

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  3. What about The Ball at Kirriemuir?

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  4. Funny, my dad sang that too. Did we have this conversation years ago?

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  5. Wikipedia doesn't seem to mention it but I'm sure we had this on an LP when I was a kid. I can remember the tune.

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  6. Possibly "My Brother Sylvest" was on the same LP.

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  7. I recall hearing it as a rugby song in my childhood. Didn't Abdul have a Russian rival (with a name that either was punningly obscene or could be made punningly obscene?) All about the Turkish Question, I suppose.

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  8. Bryan - I think we did have that conversation, now you mention it.
    Brit- My Brother Sylvest is a very fine sone - a great favourite with my son when he was a toddler...
    Gaw - Ivan Skavinsky Skivar? I guess there's a pun in there somewhere. And how very different it all was from the last time the Russkies took on Johnny Afghan...

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  9. By the way, having dislodged Abdul, I now have a new one going round in my head - Jiggery Pokery, from The Duckworth Lewis Method (that rare fusion of music and cricket). Infuriatingly catchy. Jiggery pokery, trickery jokery, how did he open me up?...

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  10. Did you get Duckworth Lewis o from my recommendation last year, Nige, or did you find it independently?

    Jiggery Pokery is the best one but I also find Mason on the Boundary rather moving.

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  11. That's him. Perhaps there's an adults-only rugby version. Or perhaps it's all in the gestures... It's lost in a fog of underage weak shandies.

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  12. It probably was yr recommendation Brit - and I love Mason On The Boundary. The melancholy of cricket...

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