linguistic songs

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Cat Faber has generously granted me permission to post here the lyrics of
her songs that I mentioned. She says in part:

>>>>>
Quick news flash--the tune to Oak, Ash and Thorn is given on Digitrad
(now www.mudcatcafe.org, I think) as being by Peter Bellamy.
Sorry.  I would have guessed Fish too; she's done tunes to a lot of
Kipling's stuff.

I don't think Yogh and Ash and Thorn has been recorded (you know
you've been doing this for a while when....).  If it has, it's on one
of Julia West's Conduit filk tapes, or the new Patchwork CDs by Greg
Vose (also of Conduit, but more recently).
<<<<<

Cat's URL Digi(tal)Trad(ition) is correct. If you want Kipling's lyrics
just search on that page for "oak and ash and thorn". Unfortunately the
tune is not available there; the page says
     Recorded by John Roberts and Tony Barrand on Dark Ships in the Forest, Folk Legacy FSI65
Here is Cat's filk of it. Though not a linguist, she's had some contact
with our profession!

I have printed out a page with the three letters in type as large as I
could fit, which I display when singing this song (to non-linguists).

>>>>>
Yogh and Ash and Thorn
TTO "Oak and Ash and Thorn"
[words copyright Catherine Faber]

Some time between the year fourteen-ought-five and -fifty-one,
There was a strange and radical change in spoken English done.
These letters all but past recall should not be held in scorn;
The rose in May must go the way of Yogh and Ash and Thorn.

Yogh and ash and thorn, good sirs, moldering vellum adorn.
Here do we see mortality in yogh and ash and thorn.

Yogh, you see, resembles a three, a little bit flattened above,
And sound denotes so low in the throat as only the Dutch could love.
But now is found both letter and sound discarded and forlorn.
Remember you are mortal too, like yogh and ash and thorn.

(chorus)

A "b" with a tail, thorn didn't prevail, but though it lost the race,
It takes a pair of letters to wear the shoes to take its place.
And "a" and "e" an ash will be, when back to back they are borne;
Into dark the passing mark of yogh and ash and thorn.

(chorus)

"Vowel shift!" said somebody, miffed, "It's more like a hey or a bransle"*
"Letter and sound keep swapping around, and 'hands about go all.'"
Oh some were stored and some ignored and some were mangled and torn,
Caught up in the rout as vowels fell out with yogh and ash and thorn.

(chorus)

Time must be an enemy, that ever ending brings.
Even word-fame cannot be heard, when words are mortal things.
Some clever cuss in studying us, some distant future morn,
May find us surely strange to her as yogh and ash and thorn.

(chorus)

Rich and strangely words will change in warpage under use,
But why in past it happened so fast, gude gohduh ohnlee knoos**
We work the sum of what we become from where and how we are born
And hold these three in memory: yogh and ash and thorn.

(chorus, if desired)

*a bransle is a kind of simple medieval ring dance.  The word is
pronounced "brawl."  I have no idea why, but one does wonder...
In addition, a "rout" (I hope I have spelled it correctly) can
be "the act of running away from a serious defeat" or "a party".
Weird, isn't it? :-)

**the middle english (Chaucerian english) for "good god only knows"
as closely as I can render it.  "gude" has a long u, and the k
in knoos should be pronounced.
<<<<<

I don't have the lyrics to the other songs handy at the moment and will provide them later.

-- Mark A. Mandel
   FIJAGH! Now, *filking*, on the other hand...
   http://world.std.com/~mam/filk.html