Twosome – Kang And Jag
The Bestiary of Flanders & Swann
Songs And Verses About Animals by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann
Piano: Donald Swann
Angel S 36112
1963
From the back cover: ALL THE WORLD, to misquote Ralph Waldo Emerson, loves a lover. In England and America, though, the affection has become even more specialized, for here the animal-lover is adored much more than any other species of the smitten. Which may perhaps be partial explanation (although very, very partial indeed) of why Michael Flanders and Donald Swann achieved such a rip-roaring success on both sides of the Atlantic with "At the Drop of a Hat," a show which included a whole clutch of ani- mal songs, at least two of which – The Hippopotamus and A Gnu – have be – come almost traditional.
There are, of course, plenty of precedents in English literature and balladry for light-hearted (sometimes even serious-minded) anecdotes about animals. John Skelton, in between bouts of lambasting Cardinal Wolsey, composed a really loquacious elegy on Philip, a pet sparrow, while just about a hundred years later John Donne was busy apostrophizing the elephant ("Like an unbent bow carelessly/His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie").
Ensuing centuries provide many other examples – Blake on the tiger, for instance, and Christopher Smart and his cat, Jeoffrey – until what might be called apotheosis was reached with poems celebrating imaginary animals, to wit Edward Lear's toeless Pobble and Lewis Carroll's vociferous Lobster.
Much more recently Mr. T. S. Eliot has been caught turning out pieces on practical cats (he has also acclaimed, although more austerely than Flanders, the merits of the hippopotamus), while D. H. Lawrence often devised more engaging poems about bats, snakes and kangaroos than he did about human beings. And all this is, of course, to ignore those countless ballads, roundelays and nursery- rhymes which most of us started to lisp while still in swaddling clothes.
It is to this doughty tradition that Michael Flanders and Donald Swann adhere, and it has finally inspired them to create an entire Bestiary. For those who don't have a dictionary at their elbow, Bestiary is "the name given to a medieval work, describing all the animals of creation, real or fabled, and allegorised for edification" (Chambers' Dictionary). Allegorising for edification is, of course, what Flanders and Swann excel at, and some of their happiest efforts turn up in this album. That "parfit and gentil knight of the chessboard," The Sea Horse, for example. There are too accounts of the inverted universe of The Sloth and the pathetic courtship of The Armadillo, as well as two veritable stings in the tales of Dead Ducks and The Ostrich.
Supporters of "At the Drop of a Hat" will already be familiar with The Warthog and may possibly also have heard The Elephant and Mopy Dick, the Whale. None of the songs and verses on this LP, however, has been previously recorded by the authors.
Once again Michael Flanders wrote all the words while Donald Swann composed nearly all the music (The Sloth was the only beast to get away from him). It is Flanders too, who sings and recites most of the pieces and also chats through the gaps in between. Both men think of these songs as "the kind that any animal would sing if he could and-in his own language probably does." And despite the impression conveyed by this mono-maniacal little song-cycle, they do not spend most of their lives in zoos. In fact both rather dislike them. And neither, odd though it may seem, keeps a pet. – CHARLES FOX
There are, of course, plenty of precedents in English literature and balladry for light-hearted (sometimes even serious-minded) anecdotes about animals. John Skelton, in between bouts of lambasting Cardinal Wolsey, composed a really loquacious elegy on Philip, a pet sparrow, while just about a hundred years later John Donne was busy apostrophizing the elephant ("Like an unbent bow carelessly/His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie").
Ensuing centuries provide many other examples – Blake on the tiger, for instance, and Christopher Smart and his cat, Jeoffrey – until what might be called apotheosis was reached with poems celebrating imaginary animals, to wit Edward Lear's toeless Pobble and Lewis Carroll's vociferous Lobster.
Much more recently Mr. T. S. Eliot has been caught turning out pieces on practical cats (he has also acclaimed, although more austerely than Flanders, the merits of the hippopotamus), while D. H. Lawrence often devised more engaging poems about bats, snakes and kangaroos than he did about human beings. And all this is, of course, to ignore those countless ballads, roundelays and nursery- rhymes which most of us started to lisp while still in swaddling clothes.
It is to this doughty tradition that Michael Flanders and Donald Swann adhere, and it has finally inspired them to create an entire Bestiary. For those who don't have a dictionary at their elbow, Bestiary is "the name given to a medieval work, describing all the animals of creation, real or fabled, and allegorised for edification" (Chambers' Dictionary). Allegorising for edification is, of course, what Flanders and Swann excel at, and some of their happiest efforts turn up in this album. That "parfit and gentil knight of the chessboard," The Sea Horse, for example. There are too accounts of the inverted universe of The Sloth and the pathetic courtship of The Armadillo, as well as two veritable stings in the tales of Dead Ducks and The Ostrich.
Supporters of "At the Drop of a Hat" will already be familiar with The Warthog and may possibly also have heard The Elephant and Mopy Dick, the Whale. None of the songs and verses on this LP, however, has been previously recorded by the authors.
Once again Michael Flanders wrote all the words while Donald Swann composed nearly all the music (The Sloth was the only beast to get away from him). It is Flanders too, who sings and recites most of the pieces and also chats through the gaps in between. Both men think of these songs as "the kind that any animal would sing if he could and-in his own language probably does." And despite the impression conveyed by this mono-maniacal little song-cycle, they do not spend most of their lives in zoos. In fact both rather dislike them. And neither, odd though it may seem, keeps a pet. – CHARLES FOX
The Warthog (The Hog Beneath The Skin)
The Sea-Horse
The Chameleon
The Whale (Mopy Dick)
The Sloth
The Rhinoceros
Twosome – Kang And Jag (Kangaroo Tango and Jaguar)
Dead Ducks
The Elephant
The Armadillo
The Spider
Threesome – The Duckbilled Platypus; The Humming Bird; The Portuguese Man-Of-War
The Wild Boar
The Ostrich
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