Oral traditions
Oct. 22nd, 2011 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bohemiancoastOr 'all knowledge is not contained on the internet' in fact. When I was a small child my father used to tell me bedtime stories. Some of them were poems. And one of our favourites was this...
"It was a dark and stormy night
The brigands they sat in their cave
The chief of the brigands arose, and he said
"Antonio, tell us a storio!"
And this is what he said.
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
Well, you get the idea. This could go on for some time. It's clearly a fairly widespread meme; the Ahlbergs wrote a book about it, for example.
M has just noticed that Googling for the version I learnt yields no results, though there's an instructive comment thread here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listeners/openinglines.shtml in which various people ascribe it to their fathers or the Scouts.
So. Do you remember this from your childhood? What words did you use? Where were you, geographically, at the time?
I have noted before that despite the work of the Opies, the rhymes remembered and told by children (in playgrounds and around campfires) are not, by and large, well documented as a tradition.
"It was a dark and stormy night
The brigands they sat in their cave
The chief of the brigands arose, and he said
"Antonio, tell us a storio!"
And this is what he said.
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
Well, you get the idea. This could go on for some time. It's clearly a fairly widespread meme; the Ahlbergs wrote a book about it, for example.
M has just noticed that Googling for the version I learnt yields no results, though there's an instructive comment thread here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listeners/openinglines.shtml in which various people ascribe it to their fathers or the Scouts.
So. Do you remember this from your childhood? What words did you use? Where were you, geographically, at the time?
I have noted before that despite the work of the Opies, the rhymes remembered and told by children (in playgrounds and around campfires) are not, by and large, well documented as a tradition.
A Dark and Stormy Night
Date: 2012-12-09 10:56 pm (UTC)And gathered round the campfire
Were brigands large and brigands small,
And the captain spake unto Antonius.
'Antonius' he said
'Give us one of your choicest selections.'
And Antonius spake as follows."
My father regaled his children, and I mine, with this starting in the early 1940s.
It was, and is, often elabourated with commentary on, e.g., the size of brigands relative to the teller or hearer, the storminess of the night, etc. It may further be interspersed with verses from the following.
"Back, back in 73, when I sailed the good ship Nancy Lee,
I'll never forget that awful night,
When the waves rolled up with all their might,
And the ship was sunk and the crew was dead,
when the captain turned to me and said,
'Back, back in 73, when I sailed the good ship Nancy Lee...'"
I recall this from the shores of Puget Sound. My father's background stretched to
Illinois and Montana.