Beans, etc, PS: The Battle Hymn...

[Jonathan Lighter]

As I remember it:

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school.
  We have tortured every teacher; we have broken every rule.
  We'll go down to the office and we'll hang the principal,
  As we go marching on.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!
  Teacher hit me with a ruler!
  I bopped her on the bean with a rotten tangerine,
  As we go marching on.

  The "tangerine" line was sometimes replaced with, "I met her at the door with a loaded .44." And sometimes both were sung in tandem, with the bean-bopping coming first.

  "School days! school days!  Dear old Golden Rule days!" --_Old song_

  (Sniff.)

  JL



Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Beans, etc, PS: The Battle Hymn...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 9:44 PM -0700 6/7/07, GLL wrote:
> >From message of Thursday 07 June 2007 21:00:
>: Actually you just reminded me--the first line in mine above should
>: also have been "...the musical fruit", not "...the magical fruit".
>: All I can say is that it has been a while. (The fourth line in our
>: version was indeed as I gave it, though.)
>
>When I head this one in fourth grade (that would have been Andover MA, 1971,)
>the first two lines were:
>
>Beans beans they're good for your heart,
>the more you eat the more you f at rt...
>etc.
>...so let's have beans at every meal."
>
>- GLL
>
>PS: With kids now getting SUSPENDED for play-acting with thumb and forefinger
>representing a pistol, anyone knwo if it's still legal to sing the parody to
>the tune of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' starting with:
>
>"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school,
>We have tortured every teacher, we have broken every rule..."
>
>All just harmless fun in its day...
>
All I remember is the (much tamer) chorus, which would barely earn a
rap on the knuckles:

Glory, glory, Hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
I bopped (or bonked?) her on the bean
With a rotten tangerine,
etc. etc.

LH

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