feed of what???

[Joel S. Berson]

Warning: the improper follows.

Jon, have you delved into what comes up Googling? (Say, "feed of
arse" + sycamore -- just 4 hits, 2 irrelevant)

I wonder if the refrain with "Sixteen annas, one rupee" is the
bowdlerized version.

One of the Google hits has the refrain as:
    Fa-la-la, Fa-la-lee
    Sixteen Matelots, One Rupee
    Feed of arse, in a sycamore tree
    Oh, bugger Janner
http://www.navy-net.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic/printertopic=1/p=239400.html

The OED tells me a "matelot" is a sailor.  Part of the context on
this page is rambunctiousness of British sailors -- e.g., "The crew
of HMS Lusty let their hair down."  (I have barely skimmed the
page.)  The person who posted the refrain refers to racism -- "I
could quote more [songs, I suppose], and ones even more
racist."  Might this version refer to many horny sailors finding only
one Indian to bugger?  Following the "arse", a WAG might make
"sycamore tree" like the ancient "yard" or "pole".  Perhaps "feed"
not as with food but in the sense of "to play something out", as in
"feed out a (stiff) nautical line".  Or possibly the arse is fed to
the sycamore tree.

(Although one might expect the tree to be in the arse, not vice
versa.  Or perhaps they did it in the tree.)

The other perhaps relevant hit is "What a complete and utter load of
bollocks. I was in the RN for sixteen years you numpty. I have never
heard such a complete feed of arse in all my life."
http://dailyreferendum.blogspot.com/2009/03/disgusting-hate-of-our-soldiers.html,
09 March 2009.

Here we have the Royal Navy again.  Perhaps one (someone else) can
inquire of the poster what he understands "feed of arse" to mean.

Joel

At 10/22/2009 11:22 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>There is a ribald song about Aladdin sung widely in the Royal Navy for the
>past sixty-odd years that employs the following refreain:
>
>
>Fa la la la, fa la la lee,
>
>Sixteen annas, one rupee,
>
>Feed of arse up a sycamore tree,
>
>Poor bugger Janner!
>
>
>
>Remarkable, wot?  "Janner" is a West Countryman, a name often used in
>reference to Plymouth dockyard workers. But nobody seems to know what "feed
>of arse" means.
>
>
>
>  Or do they>
>
>
>
>JL
>
>--
>"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
>Platypus"
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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