Pedro

Chookie suggested more topics on history and music. Lets kick it off with this:

The Indian plant, tobacco, was introduced into England around 1565 and immediately ignited a heated debate.. The new smoking habit was debated in pamphlets and song and shows no signs of extinguishing even to this day. I don't know when this song was written but its moralistic tone suggests it was probably contemporaneous. I think you will enjoy it's quaint preachiness. I quote five five verses.

TOBACCO'S BUT AN INDIAN WEED

Tobacccos' but an Indian weed,
Grows green at morn, cut down at eve.
...It shows our decay:
...We are but clay;
Think of this when you smoke tobacco.

The pipe that is so lilly-white,
Wherein so many take delight,
...Gone with a touch;
...man's life is such,
Think on this, when you smoke tobacco.

The pipe that is so foul within,
Shews how the soul is stained with sin;
...It doth require
...the purging fire.
Think on this, when you smoke tobacco.

The ashes that are left behind,
Do serve to put us all I mind,
...That unto dust,
...return we must.
Think on this, when you smoke tobacco.

The smoke that doth so high ascend,
Shows that our life must have an end;
...The vapor's gone,
...man's life is done.
Think on this, when you smoke tobacco.


Makes you want to light up doesn't it.?

Kronos

How about convincing present day authorities to stamp that into tobacco packs, instead of 'To smoke kills'; 'Smokers die prematurely'..

Indian tobacco must have tasted far differently than the chemical stuff added to cigarettes nowadays.

Pedro

I thought I saw a question here earlier about "what is this thread about". I wrote a reply and now see that the question has disappeared into cyber space. Not wanting to waste a post here it is. What the he!!.

There are two kinds of folks songs. "The songs that are sung at us" (those are usually a performance) and "the songs sung by us" songs we invent or make up about current events. Of course the two overlap. Folk songs helps us to define the history we are in the middle of, or the history we wanted to be in the middle of. A song may capture a nation for a few months and then be forgotten, but a folk song has staying power. A folk song is a song that gets under the skin of the folk and itches from one generation to the next. The folk song expresses an elemental truth of a meaningful personal or social or group experience. To re-phrase Carl Sandburg's definition of 'slang', "Folk music is music that takes off its jacket, spits on it hands and goes to work."
Or as Frank Shay put it, "History is what happened and folklore is what people think happened." A song may often distort a historical truth but it always tells the emotional truth. That emotional vitality is what gives the sung note an advantage over the historical note.
Even reading the words without the musical notation is enough to give one the sense of the living history that is a part of a nations heritage.
That is what gives a folk song the staying power a historian would like to give his thesis but can't. That is he can't, unless of course, he sings it.

Hope that answers your question as to what this thread is about. Hope you didn't think it was going to be about smoking.

Serena

That song was written by King James I/VI, he must of been an interesting guy at parties. It sounds a lot like something a troubadour would compose. Many would find this song relevant now, but even more relevant with marijuana in place of tobacco.

Chookie

I think that's what I was trying to say........

El Kaiser

Sorry Pedro, it was me. I decided it wasn't very nice to just come asking "What it's this about, i can't understand!",so i decided to wait to see how the thread developed.

Thank you for the explanation, by the way!

Chookie

This is a small extract from the Battle of Otterburn, which is the Scottish version of the events which took place on 56th August 1388. These were the people PADDYBOY mentioned in the Samurai vs Highlanders thread. They were known as Border Reivers or Steel Bonnets. They were the finest light cavalry in Europe, but they were equally at home fighting on foot. They were not "nice" people....

It fell about the Lammas tide,
When the muir-men win their hay,
The doughty Douglas bound him to ride
Into England, to drive a prey.

2. He chose the Gordons and the Graemes,
With them the Lindesays, light and gay;
But the Jardines wald nor with him ride,
And they rue it to this day.



3. And he has burn'd the dales of Tyne,
And part of Bambrough shire:
And three good towers on Reidswire fells,
He left them all on fire.



4. And he march'd up to Newcastle,
And rode it round about:
"O wha's the lord of this castle?
Or wha's the lady o't ?"



Strangely, there is also an English version of the ballad - with a different result.....