Music Halls and Theatres

Abstract

I have already mentioned the music-hall in connection with wrestling, A short section might here be appropriated to the ‘halls’ as foci of linguistic infection. Sometimes they may originate, at others they serve merely to drive the new expressions home. Catchy1) songs (song hits cf. ‘Schlager’) and humorous sketches are the chief items of the programme responsible. Now and again we find allusions to these in literature, e. g. Nora Kent recalls in her novel (Vintage, p. 180) two of the popular favourites of the Boer War ‘Bluebell’ and ‘Dolly Gray’ as well as (on p. 215) two songs of the Great War: ‘Who’s your lady-friend?’ and the famous ‘Tipperary’, and P. G. Wodehouse speaks of the ‘Honeysuckle and the Bee’ which was dinned in our ears in 1900, while I was still at the Prep. The earliest popular song of which I have any recollection is ‘Taráraboomdeay’ which, however, had suffered an eclipse before the end of the last century. Among the songs of the Great War which stick in the memory and are apt to have lines quoted from them still, are ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile’ and the still prevalent good-bye-ee from the song ‘Good-bye-ee, don’t cryee, Baby dear, wipe that tear from your eye-ee!’ American influence, which was already marked many years before the war (cf. nigger minstrels, the cakewalk, the picaninny and coon songs, etc.) gave us rag-time (whence to rag a melody) with ‘Dixie land’ and ‘Yip-i-addy-i-ay’1) about the time I left Dulwich. I well remember the tune of the latter song reappearing in Cologne in the Kölsch dialect in 1910–1911 to the words ‘Schrumm! aid (schon) widder (wieder) eir’ Fleech (Fliege) kapott!’ Rag-time over here was replaced by jazz (whence jazz or jazzy colours etc.). Of recent American importations the best (and worst) example is perhaps Yes, we have no bananas. It is interesting to note that this quaint phrase became so wide-spread as to clamour for expression in circles when least suspected, for in 1923 I heard a learned colleague perpetrate the phrase ‘Yes, we have no aspirates’ in a philological lecture!