Oh yes,but Shugheauw will be so strange to many :-
And work for women’s never done,
So the old proverb says you know
A little child was born one day
They called it Sarah Anne
It’s little head was russet brown
But we must call it tan.
It had its teeth cut in good time
And walked all by itself
But what it did after that
I’d take too long to tell.
You may be sure it had its tricks
Or it would not have been right( normal)
And what it daren’t do in the house
It tried it in the street .
But now your’e twenty one my Lass
In the Bible it says you know
That we must leave those things alone,
It’s childhood days are closed.
And work for women is never done
So the old proverb says you know
And time has got you by the hand
And says you are a woman now.
It has your Milly in its grip .
Oh yes,for five years that’s been true
But since her hair’s been bobbed
She’d pass for twenty two!
So keep both heart and spirits up
And mix your work with fun
And then you’ll always go through life
The right side of twenty one!
Thanks very much ,how charming is that !
The softening of two t’s to th - so better becomes bether, is still heard now and again hereabouts.
The use of gotten in the USA is so like dialect getten for got —- “ my sister has getten a dog.
You see that softening in afther for after .
Cheerio,and thanks again .Viktoria.
PS, the Indian love lyrics are pretty heady stuff!
Written by a woman ,but in Edwardian days women were not supposed to be passionate !
So she used a pseudonym Laurence Hope .The young wife of a middle aged British Arny Officer in India ,she was head over heels in love with him !
They had a child in which she had no real interest .
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar.
Where are you now who lies beneath your spell.?
Whom do you send on rapture’s roadway far
Before you agonise them in farewell ?
Pale hand pink tipped like lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell
I would have rather felt them round my throat.
Crushing out life than waving me farewell .
Oooer I shall have to throw a bucket of cold water on myself ?
The song is from the view of a little nautch girl being abandoned by a British soldier .
The Shalimar was a lake on which house boats floated ,water lilies grew in abundance and lotus flowers .
A rendezvous !
I can visualise a huge soprano and weedy tenor singing the passionate words
in someone’s parlour ,
The woman who wrote the passionate words coped for only a year after her husband died from complications following a serious operation.
Forgetting her baby,she walked into a river and drowned herself.
On that cheerful note—
Viktoria.
