Thursday, May 24, 2012

Hay Opera

I was listening to Purcell's KING ARTHUR and there came this part where the chorus seemed to be chuckling bawdily I suppose and it sounded like the kind of song where there should be some tankards clanking together though I didn't hear any, but I thought it deserved further investigation and the name of the air turns out to be "Your hay it is mow'd" so there's an opera song about hay for you, I thought you'd want to know. Another in our investigative series on cultural representations of hay. Libretto by Dryden! "For prating so long like a book-learn'd sot,/ Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot." Ha ha, take that book-learn'd sots, I guess. Gets 5.8 out of 10 on something called "poem hunter.com." That strikes me as hilarious for some reason - the idea of angry people on their computers voting against it. Like, "I give this seventeenth-century opera hay song two stars!" Also contains corn.