५ मार्च, २०२३

"'The Crabfish' (known also as 'The Sea Crabb'), an English folk song dating back to the mid-1800s about a man who places a crab into a chamber pot..."

"... unbeknownst to his wife, who later uses the pot without looking, and is attacked by the crab. Over the years, sanitized versions of the song were released in which a lobster or crab grabs the wife by the nose instead of by the genitals or that imply the location of the wounds by censoring the rhyming word in the second couplet. For instance, 'Children, children, bring the looking glass / Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's a-face' (arse)."

From the Wikipedia article "Expurgation," which I'm reading this morning because I'm listening to the new Chris Rock special (on Netflix) and, in an effort to blog it, relying on a sanitized WaPo article and using the word "expurgations/expurgation/expurgate" for the first time in the 19-year history of this blog.

Elsewhere in Wikipedia, there's a whole article on "The Crabfish," complete with full lyrics, which, first, I'm very happy to see after suffering through numerous YouTube renderings of the expurgated song:
In the middle of the night, I thought I'd have a fit
When my old lady got up to a-have a shit
By the way side high diddly aye do.... 
Children, children, bring the looking glass
Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's arse
By the way side high diddly aye do

Children, children, did you hear the grunt
Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's cunt
By the way side high diddly aye do.... 
ADDED: The "Expurgation" article has an awfully random collection of examples, e.g.:
The 1925 Harvard Press edition of Montaigne's essays (translated by George Burnham Ives) was published without the essays pertaining to sex. 
A Boston-area ban on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! – owing to a short motel sex scene – prompted the author to assemble a 150-copy fig-leaf edition with the nine offending pages blacked out as a publicity stunt. 
In 1938, a jazz song "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)" peaked at number two on US charts. The original lyrics were sung with the word "floozie", meaning a sexually promiscuous woman, or a prostitute, but record company Vocalion objected. Hence the word was substituted with the almost similar sounding title word "floogie" in the second recording. The "floy floy" in the title was a slang term for a venereal disease, but that was not widely known at the time. In the lyrics it is sung repeatedly "floy-doy", which was widely thought as a nonsense refrain....

The list ends with the recent idiocy aimed at Roald Dahl’s books (in which "sensitivity readers" endeavored to ensure that the books could "continue to be enjoyed by all today").

१३ टिप्पण्या:

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Censorship was a 5th grade joke

Johnny, can you give us an example of prose or poetry?

Mary had a little lamb
It was a little runt
It stuck its nose beneath her dress
And shoved it up her ... Do you want prose or poetry?

Prose please.

Asshole.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The crab, instead of being stuck in the pot and pulled back by other crabs, got a helping hand.

Jamie म्हणाले...

This post made me think of a ditty my grandfather taught us that he called "Mr. Johnny Goback," but which is apparently something closer to "Mr. Johnny Verbeck":

Oh, Mr. Jonny Verbeck,
How could you be so mean?
We told you you'd be sorry for
Inventing that machine!
Now all the neighbors' cats and dogs
Will never more be seen.
They'll all be ground to sausages
In Jonny Verbeck's machine!

One night the machine was busted -
The deuce of a thing wouldn't go.
So Johnny Verbeck, he crawled inside
To see what made it so.
Along came his wife in a nightmare,
A-walking in her sleep.
She gave the crank a deuce of a yank
And Johnny Verbeck was meat!

...

So, not dirty, but it delighted and grossed us all out as kids. I don't remember whether I taught it to my kids...

On a similar topic, I'm fascinated by the games kids teach one another. A desultory Google search turns up nothing on this subject except how to teach your kids children's games and what social values they impart, which is not what I'm interested in. (AT ALL.) Part of me always wanted to be an anthropologist of childhood, studying the cultures children create and how they pass them to the next generation of children.

Iman म्हणाले...

The pot’s contents were rank and gooey
What the fuck did you expect… Crab Louie?!?!

Lloyd W. Robertson म्हणाले...

Black people shouldn't fight with white people watching. White people shouldn't fight with black people watching. If such observations occur, they might reinforce, er, certain stereotypes. Better to cover things up.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Did Chris say the dreaded N-word?

I'm sick of the hypocrisy...

YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

The original opening lyrics of Little Richards hit "Tutti Frutti" were "Tutti Frutti
Good Booty", which makes much more sense than "Tutti Frutti, Oh Rudi", but weren't proper for a good white boy like Pat Boone to sing in front of proper white ladies.

You could get away with lyrics like that in black bars outside of Macon, GA, however.

khematite म्हणाले...

Instead of "The Crabfish," in my little corner of the world (Manhattan in the 1950s), we heard "The Good Ship Venus." It was quite an eye-opener for a ten-year old. In later years, I wondered whether this song had actually been passed down to us through many earlier generations. Then came Wikipedia and it became evident that the song had been learned from a 1952 Oscar Brand album, probably purchased by an older sibling or a parent of some kid in our neighborhood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Ship_Venus



Mikey NTH म्हणाले...

There's some toilet humor in the Canterbury Tales.

khematite म्हणाले...

>>>>On a similar topic, I'm fascinated by the games kids teach one another. A desultory Google search turns up nothing on this subject except how to teach your kids children's games and what social values they impart, which is not what I'm interested in. (AT ALL.) Part of me always wanted to be an anthropologist of childhood, studying the cultures children create and how they pass them to the next generation of children.<<<<<<


The Wikipedia article on "Childlore" reports that it is believed that "Buck buck" (aka Johnny-on-a-pony) has been played by children since the days of Nero in ancient Rome.

Leora म्हणाले...

I knew about floozie but had no idea about "floy floy."

Darkisland म्हणाले...

Robert Burns wrote a series of drinking songs with adult themes. Oscar Brand, in the early 60s, performed them on an album called "The Merry Muses of Caledonia". I have a copy because it is exactly the kind of thing any 16 year old boy should have. Nothing to play it on anymore, though.

The titles do not do full justice to the bawdiness of the lyrics but include:


The Fornicator
Muirland Meg
Nine Inch will Please a Lady
She Grippet at the Girtest o't
Wha'll M—w Me Now ?
John Anderson my Jo
A Hole to Hide it in
How Can I Keep my Maidenhead
Nae Hair On't
Tail Todle

John Henry

Darkisland म्हणाले...

I've never heard of a "crabfish" before. The picture looks like a lobster. Or perhaps a crayfish.

So is that the etymology of crayfish? Crabfish > crayfish? https://www.etymonline.com/word/crayfish seems to say probably not.

John Henry