December 27, 2016

Don't Forget Good King Stephen

"Good King Stephen looked outside,
On the Feast of Wenzel.
Slapped his pocket and exclaimed,
'I have lost my pencil!'

While a lackey standing near
A window drew a stencil.
And a rooster crowed quite loud,
Sitting on a fencil hmmm.

Then King Stephen went outdoors,
Into the night so cru-el.
And he saw a poor man there,
Gath'ring winter fu-el.

He said 'That I'm still up north,
I feel like a foo-el.
If I were in Cape Town now,
I'd be by the poo-el hmmm."

Wolf

December 17, 2016

The Partisan

By Leonard Cohen.

My favorite versions are by Joan Baez

And by Leslie Fish with somebody named Garcia Aritzmendi. I heard that at an SCA event, they sang the English parts together, the bit that is usually in French or Greek, was sung by Aritzmendi in Euskara.

A song called IIRC 'N Kommando Gesang by somebody I forget. It's about a small farmer fighting with the Boer Commandos against the British.

I remember these bits.

"The cold queen of England wants gold and bright diamonds,
She's sending her redcoats to plunder and kill.
She'll find that dear bought are the gems of the Transvaal,
Where Boer commandos haunt every hill."

"My wife and three children were caught by the English.
Behind the barbed wire they sickened and died.
But soon we sweep down like a fire from the highveld,
And burn the death camps with the English inside."

"I sleep with a Mauser and rise before cockcrow,
And go on commando my neighbors and me.
We'll live as we can and we'll fight as we're able,
Till England's defeated and the Transvaal is free."

Wolf