PASTICHE with PARODY LYRICS subbed into TWO WELL-KNOWN SEASONAL SONGS, another pairody.
ORIGINAL SONG#2: "Good King Wenceslas", John Mason Neale 1853, but often now mistakenly referred to as 'traditional'. Neale's piece, (based on accounts of the Bohemian Wenceslas legend, and a 13th century 'spring- carol tune) was highly criticized in the 1920s as "ponderous moral doggerel"; see the interesting description in the Wikipedia essay on this topic.PARODY-SONGLINK: To find ukulele chord-charts to help you accompany "Turkey Leftovers" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.
TURKEY LEFTOVERS
(to the tune of The Christmas Song - "Chestnuts Roasting")
Essay featured in Economist,
Turkeys' origins disclosed -
Centerpiece of each year's Yuletide feast,
Subspecies bred in Mexico.
Dolts like me believed that gobblers and that Mid-East land -
Names were mere coincidence.
Ottomans, trading ships, caravans -
I understand, it now makes sense.
Each year I prove I'm such a goof,
I try create too late a spiffy Christmas spoof,
But with a month's delay I'll get it right
Helped by this article about "Turkey's Flight".
And so I'm offering this paraphrase
Of what the author claimed was true,
French - d'inde, and the Turks call them "hindi" - what jerks!
While in India, name in Hindi,
And in Portugal's "peru".
To the tune of "Good King Wenceslas")
Montezuma once bred fowl tastier than pheasant;
Shipped the Spanish queen a thou - funky kind of present.
Isabella loathed the birds, trimmings too displeased her;
No use for leftovers, she didn't have a free-eezer.
'Turkeys', Moors, then Jews were banned from the royal kitchens;
Legend says that's how began Spanish Inquisition -
Cortes later sacked the lands of the Aztec ruler.
Phil or Izz-and-Ferdinand ? Can't say which was cru-ueller.
Avian émigrés toured through, crowns of Europe hosting,
Though few of their lackeys knew oven-time for roasting.
Hot or cold and steep or flat, exiled birds were living,
Prospered in those countries that didn't have Thanksgi-iving.
Thus this misnamed flock did cope through the 16th century,
'ventually hens copped some hope with the English gentry.
For some time they settled down, breeding they found boring,
Westward they shipped out again, restlessly explo-oring.
Turkeys in America, native home recovered,
Quirky and hysterical history discovered -
Essay we would clearly rank best of the Econ'mist,
Author we should dearly thank-(s)he remains anon-ymous.
In this post, we continue with our novel form of poetic wordplay.
Inspired by Japanese haiku poetry, the "palinku" is a terse verse with a total of 17 syllables displayed on three lines. Unlike its earlier English-language forerunners, this concoction does not mandate the precise distribution of the syllables among the three lines, but does stipulate that each word in the poem be included in a palindromic phrase or sentence (i.e. one that can be read either forwards or backwards).
To help the reader discern the origin of the lyrics, each palindrome, generally occupying one of the three lines of the poem, has been color-coded. Readers will note that we have been publishing verses of this type on the 17th of each month.
You can readily view all our verses of this type if you proceed with a single click to our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE. (Or if you prefer, you can stay on this particular blogsite and look for the offerings for the 17th day of each month -- there are now more than 60 of these.)
Be sure to check out the multiple collections of verses on 'Patients and their Maladies" by proceeding to our full-service blog ,"Edifying Nonsense." CLICK HERE !
reprise from November 2020
The collections of short verses entitled "Non-Sequiturs" on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense", contain an admittedly bizarre assortment of nonsensical odds-and-ends, that don't quite fit into other topic-based offerings. But should you want to review the entire collection, click HERE.
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| reminiscence of South Carolina |
fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks
