Madeira, M'Dear -- Michael Flanders

(Poem #1710) Madeira, M'Dear She was young, she was pure, she was new, she was nice She was fair, she was sweet seventeen He was old, he was vile, and no stranger to vice He was base, he was bad, he was mean He had slyly inveigled her up to his flat To view his collection of stamps And he said as he hastened to put out the cat The wine, his cigar and the lamps "Have some madeira, m'dear You really have nothing to fear I'm not trying to tempt you, that wouldn't be right You shouldn't drink spirits at this time of night Have some madeira, m'dear It's very much nicer than beer I don't care for sherry, one cannot drink stout And port is a wine I can well do without It's simply a case of 'chacun a son gout' Have some madeira, m'dear" Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass And the fate of the maiden who topes She lowered her standards by raising her glass Her courage, her eyes and his hopes She sipped it, she drank it, she drained it, she did He quietly refilled it again And he said as he secretly carved one more notch On the butt of his gold-handled cane "Have some madeira, m'dear, I've got a small cask of it here And once it's been opened, you know it won't keep Do finish it up, it will help you to sleep Have some madeira, m'dear, It's really an excellent year Now if it were gin, you'd be wrong to say yes The evil gin does would be hard to assess (Besides it's inclined to affect me prowess) Have some madeira, m'dear" Then there flashed through her mind what her mother had said With her antepenultimate breath "Oh my child, should you look on the wine that is red Be prepared for a fate worse than death!" She let go her glass with a shrill little cry Crash! tinkle! it fell to the floor When he asked, "What in Heaven?" she made no reply Up her mind, and a dash for the door "Have some madeira, m'dear", Rang out down the hall loud and clear A tremulous cry that was filled with despair As she fought to take breath in the cool midnight air "Have some madeira, m'dear" The words seemed to ring in her ear Until the next morning, she woke up in bed With a smile on her lips and an ache in her head And a beard in her ear 'ole that tickled and said "Have some madeira, m'dear" -- Michael Flanders

We've run a couple of Flanders and Swann pieces before, but neither of them
highlighted one of my favourite things about the duo's songs - the sheer,
unabashed *cleverness* of the lyrics. Like Gilbert before him (and Lehrer
after him), Flanders was adept at leaving the listener simultaneously
entertained by the humour and consciously impressed by the ingenious
crafting of the words. (This is a chancy thing to do in more serious verse,
where cleverness can be distracting and hence detrimental to the central
thrust, but with humour it works very well indeed.)

Today's song has the double bonus of being a particularly neat piece of
extended wordplay, and of working well even divorced from the music. (Some
of my other favourites, like "Misalliance", end up sounding a bit flat when
I try to read them as pure 'poetry'.) It is also, I believe, one of Flanders
and Swann's best-known works, possibly partly due to the Limeliters' having
covered it and brought it to a fresh audience. Needless to say, the music
does add a whole new dimension to it, and I highly recommend getting hold of
the three-CD "The Complete Flanders and Swann" (which isn't, but is well
worth having anyway).

Parenthetically, the figure of speech used in constructions like "he
hastened to put out the cat / The wine, his cigar and the lamps" is 'zeugma'
(I won't go into the fine shades of distinction between zeugma and syllepsis,
but it's worth looking up). Pope was fond of it too, for example in the
following from The Rape of the Lock:

  Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey
  Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

"Madeira M'dear" is, unsurprisingly, often cited in discussions of zeugma;
it remains the best example of the form I've encountered.

martin

[Links]

A biography of Flanders:
  http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/flanders.html

And of Swann (whose genius is sadly unapparent on the printed page)
  http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/biog.html

More on zeugmas (zeugma? zeugmata?)
  http://www.tristate.edu/Community_Read/things_they_carried_tierney.htm

Twenty Tons of TNT -- Michael Flanders

Guest poem sent in by Reed C Bowman

(Poem #1268) Twenty Tons of TNT I have seen it estimated: Somewhere between death and birth There are now three thousand million People living on this earth And the stock-piled mass destruction Of the Nuclear Powers-That-Be Equals--for each man or woman-- Twenty tons of TNT. Every man of every nation (Twenty tons of TNT) Shall receive this allocation Twenty tons of TNT. Texan, Bantu, Slav or Maori, Argentine or Singhalee, Every maiden brings this dowry Twenty tons of TNT. Not for thirty silver shilling Twenty tons of TNT Twenty thousand pounds a killing-- Twenty tons of TNT. Twenty hundred years of teaching, Give to each his legacy, Plato, Buddha, Christ or Lenin, Twenty tons of TNT Father, Mother, Son and Daughter, Twenty tons of TNT Give us land and seed and water, Twenty tons of TNT. Children have no need of sharing; At each new nativity Come the ghostly Magi bearing Twenty tons of TNT Ends the tale that has no sequel Twenty tons of TNT. Now in death are all men equal Twenty tons of TNT. Teach me how to love my neighbour, Do to him as he to me; Share the fruits of all our labour Twenty tons of TNT. -- Michael Flanders

          (of Flanders & Swann)

I ran across this a few weeks ago and wanted to send it in. "Contribution
to Statistics" (Poem #1267) reminded me of it again. Somewhat more
stark than the Szymborska poem, and from a rather different angle, but
with a similar message in the end. For Flanders & Swann, it's an
unusually political and astonishingly bleak song. From the population
statistic (and presumably from the destructive tonnage statistic as
well) it is clear this is quite old, from the height of the Cold War
arms race. Now we have twice as many people, I wonder if each has a
greater or a lesser allocation of explosive potential?

Anyway, like many pieces - poetic, dramatic, cinematic - which succeed
in being affectingly dire or tragic or bleak, this poem achieves its
effect by humourous touches and a humourous tone throughout, which
better sets off the message in its very real horror. The rhythm is
bouncy, the alliteration of the refrain makes it sound cute, and the
constant repetition of that refrain fits into F&S's usual comic style,
though in this case, it also serves to drive home that awful, absurd,
insane statistic. It's been way too long since I heard the recording,
but I assume the performance both reinforced the jaunty silliness to
draw you in, and came down hard enough on the refrain to make the point

(One textual note: this transcription is a corrected version of the main
text I've seen on the web, but I haven't been able to compare it to the
original, or find a printed copy, so problems may remain. I'm especially
leery of the "Twenty thousand pounds of killing" line, since - obviously
- it should be forty thousand, but all texts I've seen so far seem to
keep the "twenty" repetition even in the face of proper conversions.)

Reed

[addendum]

  [Bob J subsequently submits a corrected, "official" version of the poem,
  which has been used to replace the earlier copy. Here are his notes.]

  I offer this as a copy from "The Songs of Michael Flanders and Donald
  Swann"

  Only minor differences e.g. "Twenty thousand pounds a killing"

  International Music Publications Ltd First published in 1977 (This
  edition 1996)

  ISBN 1-85909-439-2

  Bob J

A Song of the Weather -- Michael Flanders

The aforementioned Irresistible Followup...

(Poem #649) A Song of the Weather January brings the snow Makes your feet and fingers glow February's Ice and sleet Freeze the toes right off your feet Welcome March with wintry wind Would thou wer't not so unkind April brings the sweet spring showers On and on for hours and hours Farmers fear unkindly May Frost by night and hail by day June just rains and never stops Thirty days and spoils the crops In July the sun is hot Is it shining? No, it's not August cold, and dank, and wet Brings more rain than any yet Bleak September's mist and mud Is enough to chill the blood Then October adds a gale Wind and slush and rain and hail Dark November brings the fog Should not do it to a dog Freezing wet December then: Bloody January again! (January brings the snow Makes your feet and fingers glow). -- Michael Flanders

"Oh, to be in England, now that April..." - no, wait a minute, May - um, no,
June? July? Ah, wotthehell - I'm *glad* I'm not there <g>. No particular
comment on this amusing catalogue of the seasons - perhaps someone more
local would care to comment on its accuracy?

Like Tom Lehrer on the other side of the Atlantic, Flanders and Swann wrote
and recorded a disappointingly small set of songs, but what's there is all
brilliant. I've contemplated running some of my personal favourites, like
'Misalliance', 'A Transport of Delight' and 'Madeira M'Dear', but held off
due to a reluctance to run song lyrics without the music on which they
depend. Still, like Gilbert before him, Flanders' lyrics are clever enough
(and funny enough) to stand on their own. This is particularly true since,
again like Gilbert, he revels in complicated rhyme schemes and metrical
patterns, and at times the most deliciously contrived of rhymes. (Sadly,
today's piece is not representative of the latter tendencies).

Links:

 There's a biography at
 [broken link] http://members.tripod.com/~TimothyPlatypus/FaS/biography.html

 From the excellent F&S site at
 http://timothyplatypus.tripod.com/FaS/index.html

 This was an Irresistible Followup to Goulder's 'The January Man', poem #648

 Other songwriters in the same vein include Tom Lehrer and W. S. Gilbert,
 both of whom have featured on Minstrels before. See
 www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html

And finally:

 Many thanks to Ch'kai for introducing me to Flanders and Swann in the first
 place.

-martin