Good King Wensas
December 26th, 2017 by G.
The boy is father to the man. In honor of the feast of St. Stephen’s, here is Bruce C. at his drollest. I laughed, and not just because a few weeks ago in choir I was bellowing out “Good people all, this ChristmasTIDE” because damn the wrecker who published our choral music with it spelled “time.” Or because I remembered last year the same choir director, bless her longsuffering heart, trying to hide her grin while I gave a harangue on where the comma should be in “God rest ye merry, gentlemen.” Or the year before that . . .
Anyway, read the whole thing. If you don’t laugh, a pox on you and no wassail.
Comments (8)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
December 26th, 2017 10:30:27
E.C.
December 26, 2017
Oh, goodness, memorized songs. I remember being perpetually confused as we sang ‘Love One Another’ in Primary, until I finally learned to read and realized that ‘shalmeno’ was, in fact, ‘shall men know’. I’m not sure what I thought the former meant, but I sang it with conviction and no one ever corrected me.
Also I recall that my dad, when he was little, was terrified of one of the Primary songs because it said ‘can a little child like me?’ and he interpreted that as cannibalism instead of a question, and assumed that his mother would eventually preserve him along with all the other meat. Poor kid.
Misprints are terrible, and most especially when they’re almost plausible, and thus perpetuated.
Ivan Wolfe
December 26, 2017
It’s not a song, but the KJV really, really bugs me with that totally inaccurate comma between Wonderful and Counselor. The title is “Wonderful Counselor” – those are not two different titles, people!
Señor Wences
December 27, 2017
S’aright?
Pedro
December 27, 2017
S’ariiight!
Handel
December 28, 2017
Ach, you mean it musst be sung “Wonderfullllllllll Counselor” without dat break?
Wm Jas
December 31, 2017
Once you’ve got the comma in the right place, you can see why “God rest you merry, gentlemen” is correct. The pronoun is the object of “rest” and should be in the accusative case.
G.
January 1, 2018
Doh! Hoist on my own pedant.
Bookslinger
January 1, 2018
Ivan, I can’t tell if you were being serious or sarcastic. But a quick web search shows that a good case can be made that they are two separate titles.