YBQ in WSJ / "bottle in front of me" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mark Mandel]

That's much like this bit from "The Charladies' Ball":

http://www.mudcat.org/Detail.CFM?messages__Message_ID=37887
Chorus:
At the Charladies' Ball people said one and all,
"You're the belle of the ball, Mrs. Mulligan."
We had one-steps and two-steps and the divil knows what new steps.
We swore that we never would be dull again, by dad.
We had wine, porter and Jameson.
We had cocktails and cocoa and all.
We had champagne that night but we'd real pains next morning,  <====
The night that we danced at the Charladies' Ball.


Comment at http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=6502#37804 says:
Dominic Behan recorded the following part of the song on an EP record
in about 1962.

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=13663#113531:
This is sung by Frank Harte on his album "Daybreak and a Candle End",
and the lyrics are in his book "Songs of Dublin"(1978 Gilbert Dalton,
pub). He says "A song made famous by Jimmy O'Dea and written by Harry
O'Donovan. The song was written for performing on the stage but it has
so much that is Dublin in it that it has been accepted by the
tradition."


Wikipedia has a slightly different version at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Charladies%27_Ball




On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> A slight antedating of the Tom Waits version.   Apparently Waits used the quote on "Fernwood 2 Night" on 8/1/1977:
>
> http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/interviews/77-aug1-fernwood2night.html
>
>
> Note that he also said "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends," a line with a similar structure. (although no statement that he originated the line.)
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org