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Session 3: TALL TALES IN SONGS AND LEGENDS
(Just stretchin' the truth a bit)
Adam Blatner, M.D.
Posted February, 2014 for
Lectures for Senior University Georgetown
Don't mean no harm. But these were fun,
a form of entertainment. Tell us a story! Our free time
wasn't all taken up by the internet and video games and
television and movies. Back then it often cost to much money
for some to go to the theatre, and for many more, well, they
couldn't even get to a town big enough to have a theatre,
leastways not more than once or twice a year.
As I say, myth and legend pervade human societies, and offer not only meaning, but also their equivalent of fantasy and science fiction. Folklore could take up a whole college curriculum---and does in many institutions. This lecture focuses on American songs and stories, but with a generous acknowledgment that every culture had tons of this stuff, passed down by legends, and almost always elaborated by the story-teller as part of his or her art.
Personal Background
I was a camp counselor and enjoyed folk songs and kids' songs, and many funny songs were that way because they were so outrageous!
Oh I went up in a balloon so big, the people on the ground they looked like a pig,
Like a mouse, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleases.
I also liked folk songs, which were popular in the mid-50s. People think of pop music as shifting from golden oldies into rock, but there plentiful forays branching out into Latin music, rhumbas and mambos, cha-chas and tangoes and waltzes. Those were back in the days when kids often danced to popular tunes, and dances had steps, and you learned to dance. Ya tell kids that nowadays and they won't believe you!
Anyway, folk music was also popular, the Weavers, the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; and so forth. Among those who were a little into folk music, Pete Seeger was known. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez made a bridge into folk rock in the mid-60s. And there are tons of sad songs, work songs, political songs, but this talk will focus on those that sort of told stories, and they were tall stories.
Tall Stories
It's not okay to be deceptive in selling a house or a car, but in certain contexts, spinning a yarn that pulled your leg a bit was just part of the fun. No harm intended, and everyone sort of knew this was hogwash. Well, maybe not a greenhorn, but that was part of the initiation, seein' them believe it until you went just a little too far and they slowly caught on that you was layin' it on pretty thick. Blarney was what the Irish called it.
More recently some academic philosophers have commented on the stretchin' of the truth by people who were sort of responsible to tell the truth, or that was the assumed social contract. Truth-i-ness? Bullshit? I say that word, which in my time was a swear word not to be heard by ladies, because it was actually published as a title by Harry Frankfort early this century.
Anyway, we loved a bit of nonsense and tall story back in my day the way kids like a roller coaster or a haunted house. I'll pretend to scare you and you pretend to be scared. But I'm not going for scaring---ghost stories---that would be a whole 'nother lecture. This is about tall stories.
Now we've always had tall stories in one-liners. How hot was it? It was sooo hot that I saw a dog chasin a rabbit and they wuz both walking!
How cold was it? How hard was it back in the old days? How much did it rain? A frog-choker! The language itself was colorful.
Yo' momma so ugly that... yo momma so fat... he was so skinny that... she was so dumb that... and sometimes we lumbed that trope, that angle of story with whatever group was out at the time. Aggies, Dumb Blondes, etc.
So a tall story just drags that out for a few minutes or longer.
Some Songs
You ask how I know all this? Well I am a lot older than I look. I take magic potion brewed up by a special alternative medicine practitioner---but back in my time we called in magic old ladies. My friend the witch doctor told me what to say.... So actually I'm ten thousand years old!
Yeah! I was born about ten thousand years ago! There ain't nothin' in this world that I don't know!
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playin' ring-around-the-roses, and I'll whup the guy what says it isn't so!
This little song goes on for many versus, and shows several features of some tall stories.
It is not precisely veracious, a made up word, made to sound all smarty pants and college-like,
because Moses did his thing over a thousand years before Peter and Paul, and anyway, Peter probably never met Paul, but don't matter..
And it's braggin'--that is a characteristic of the bold old-timers. They could enjoy a good brash brag. Being all deferential and modest was for pussy-cats.
And it was fun for the audience, seeing someone brag, when they had been whupped for squeakin' in school.
School days, school days, were actually pretty boring, and the experience was peppered by torture. Nowadays a whippin with a hick'ry stick would be called child abuse and none of your kids---and probably not you---would stand it if some teacher would hit your kid, much less with a stick, much less several times. But in our own time whether or not to spank a kid has been a live issue---even with a paddle. We've come a long way and aren't there yet.
Lots of songs were tall tales in verse and melody.
sss
As I say, myth and legend pervade human societies, and offer not only meaning, but also their equivalent of fantasy and science fiction. Folklore could take up a whole college curriculum---and does in many institutions. This lecture focuses on American songs and stories, but with a generous acknowledgment that every culture had tons of this stuff, passed down by legends, and almost always elaborated by the story-teller as part of his or her art.
Personal Background
I was a camp counselor and enjoyed folk songs and kids' songs, and many funny songs were that way because they were so outrageous!
Oh I went up in a balloon so big, the people on the ground they looked like a pig,
Like a mouse, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleases.
I also liked folk songs, which were popular in the mid-50s. People think of pop music as shifting from golden oldies into rock, but there plentiful forays branching out into Latin music, rhumbas and mambos, cha-chas and tangoes and waltzes. Those were back in the days when kids often danced to popular tunes, and dances had steps, and you learned to dance. Ya tell kids that nowadays and they won't believe you!
Anyway, folk music was also popular, the Weavers, the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; and so forth. Among those who were a little into folk music, Pete Seeger was known. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez made a bridge into folk rock in the mid-60s. And there are tons of sad songs, work songs, political songs, but this talk will focus on those that sort of told stories, and they were tall stories.
Tall Stories
It's not okay to be deceptive in selling a house or a car, but in certain contexts, spinning a yarn that pulled your leg a bit was just part of the fun. No harm intended, and everyone sort of knew this was hogwash. Well, maybe not a greenhorn, but that was part of the initiation, seein' them believe it until you went just a little too far and they slowly caught on that you was layin' it on pretty thick. Blarney was what the Irish called it.
More recently some academic philosophers have commented on the stretchin' of the truth by people who were sort of responsible to tell the truth, or that was the assumed social contract. Truth-i-ness? Bullshit? I say that word, which in my time was a swear word not to be heard by ladies, because it was actually published as a title by Harry Frankfort early this century.
Anyway, we loved a bit of nonsense and tall story back in my day the way kids like a roller coaster or a haunted house. I'll pretend to scare you and you pretend to be scared. But I'm not going for scaring---ghost stories---that would be a whole 'nother lecture. This is about tall stories.
Now we've always had tall stories in one-liners. How hot was it? It was sooo hot that I saw a dog chasin a rabbit and they wuz both walking!
How cold was it? How hard was it back in the old days? How much did it rain? A frog-choker! The language itself was colorful.
Yo' momma so ugly that... yo momma so fat... he was so skinny that... she was so dumb that... and sometimes we lumbed that trope, that angle of story with whatever group was out at the time. Aggies, Dumb Blondes, etc.
So a tall story just drags that out for a few minutes or longer.
Some Songs
You ask how I know all this? Well I am a lot older than I look. I take magic potion brewed up by a special alternative medicine practitioner---but back in my time we called in magic old ladies. My friend the witch doctor told me what to say.... So actually I'm ten thousand years old!
Yeah! I was born about ten thousand years ago! There ain't nothin' in this world that I don't know!
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playin' ring-around-the-roses, and I'll whup the guy what says it isn't so!
This little song goes on for many versus, and shows several features of some tall stories.
It is not precisely veracious, a made up word, made to sound all smarty pants and college-like,
because Moses did his thing over a thousand years before Peter and Paul, and anyway, Peter probably never met Paul, but don't matter..
And it's braggin'--that is a characteristic of the bold old-timers. They could enjoy a good brash brag. Being all deferential and modest was for pussy-cats.
And it was fun for the audience, seeing someone brag, when they had been whupped for squeakin' in school.
School days, school days, were actually pretty boring, and the experience was peppered by torture. Nowadays a whippin with a hick'ry stick would be called child abuse and none of your kids---and probably not you---would stand it if some teacher would hit your kid, much less with a stick, much less several times. But in our own time whether or not to spank a kid has been a live issue---even with a paddle. We've come a long way and aren't there yet.
Lots of songs were tall tales in verse and melody.
sss