Horrible Histories - Ch-ch-ch-ch-Charles Darwin

Here.

The Three-Foot Rule

A video of Professor Graeme Gooday (singing) and Dr Ben Marsden (on the piano) performing Rakine's metrical ode at the BSHS Conference in Aberdeen is now available online here.

The Mathematician in Love

From William J. Macquorn Rankine, Songs and Fables (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1874): 3-6. Online here.

The Charles Babbage Song

By Alison Adam. Winner of the 2009 History of Science Songs Competition!

Tune - Clementine

Let us sing, now, of Charles Babbage
Let us have an oration
Shows that his was not a drab age
As he invented computation

Chorus
Leibniz, Pascal, Boole and Turing
These are names that can’t compete
With the Analytical Engine’s luring
And Babbage’s amazing feat

Enchantress of Numbers, Ada Lovelace
First programmer’s not a chap
Looks down on, from some above place
Programming’s continued gender gap

Later folks lived in a lab age
Easier to make your kit
None approached it like Charles Babbage
Though he never quite built it

Then he wrote a Bridgewater Treatise
‘Twas a substantial contribution
Showed us God’s world seen through neat eyes
Paved the way for evolution

He thought science was declining
Wanted it to be reformed
As the Royal Society’s not shining
Said the establishment must be stormed

British Asses, glad of Babbage
And his role in their founding
Proves the truth of Groucho’s adage
Don’t be a member of the club you’re in

Let us sing, now, of Charles Babbage
Despite an occasional folly path
Shows the fab age, have a stab age
Of that splendid polymath

Songs of the Geological Society Adapted By a Late President

AIR. – “O a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw”

O a’ the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there Silurian beds abound
The beds that I lo’e best;
There’s limestone blue, and sandstone too,
Wi’ slate and shale between,
An deep below, the coarse grits go,
Wi’ purple slates and green.

There’s trilobites in Bala bed,
Productas in coal shale,
There’s mony a fish in Auld, Auld Red,
Wi’ heterocercal tail;
There’s no a Mezozoic rock
Hauds trilobites within,
There’s mony a Palaeozoic block
Whar trilobites are seen.

Punch 25 (1853), p. 214.

The Cambridge Duet. As Performed Before the British Association.

PROFESSOR O. PROFESSOR H.

Professor O.
H_Y, don’t kick up a scrimmage,
Take these brains, and mark their shape:
Made in Providence’s image,
Man must not be called an Ape.

Professor H.
O-N, I am noways funky,
And maintain that this is true:
Man is really but a Monkey,
Save in moral points of view.

Professor O. Man’s no Monkey.
Professor H. Man’s a Monkey.

Both. From this fix there’s no escape.

Professor O. He is a drunky,
Professor H. He is a flunkey,

Professor O. Who asserts that Man’s an Ape.
Professor H. Who denies that Man's an Ape.


Punch, October 11, 1862, p. 155 .

Canzonet on the Comet

AIR – “Little Bo Peep”

THE Comet has flown,
Where? – it is not quite known;
But in two thousand years we may find him.
Says AIRY, he’ll then
Come and see us again,
And bring his tail behind him.

Punch, November 6, 1858, p. 185.

The Scientific Simpleton; Or, An Insane Inventor's Ingenious Inventory Investigated.

1

A scientific simpleton who struggled fame to gain,
Was driven nearly crazy from invention on the brain,
He dabbled in mechanics, electricity of course,
And mastered all the mysteries of centrifugal force,
He took out patents every day, he’d always something new,
He vowed that he before he died some clever thing would do,
With his inventions (if they’d but succeeded,) you would say,
He would have made the mighty world roll round the other way.

(Chorus.)
Invention was his ruin, if you’ll listen unto me,
I’ll shew this scientific simplteton’s simplicitee
The catalogue is categorical as you can see,
Of this inventor’s most ingenious inventoree

2

He made, to show what man can do if he will persevere,
An eight-day clock that only wanted winding once a year,
An automatic German band that always played in tune,
A specially constructed gun, with which to shoot the moon;
A lift for raising Capital, worked by electric spark,
A pump for pumping secrets out of those who’d keep them dark,
A triple-barrelled telescope with which a man could see,
With half an eye what sort of day next Wednesday week would be.
(Chorus as before.)

3

He made a patent mousetrap next, you’ll say he was a flat,
Instead of mice it always caught he favorite tabby cat,
A spirit bottle stopper on the tipplers rather rough,
It stopped them having any more when they had drank [sic] enough;
A patent ten-ton nut-cracker that could’nt [sic] crack a joke,
Some onion seed, he made, when sown, it came up artichoke,
A patent penknife extra sharp to cut his corns in bed,
So extra sharp and patent it cut off his toe instead.
(Chorus as before.)

4

An old umbrella next he made you’ll think it very strange,
When left behind you found you’d got a new one in exchange,
And then a patent safety match for striking on the wall,
It was indeed so very safe ‘twould not ignite at all;
He made and he invented such a lot of things for pelf,
That finally he made a precious noodle of himself,
He made a patent pill to give you everlasting life,
He took one dose, and now his charming widow is my wife.


Written by J. F. McArdle and Frank Amos. Composed by Vincent Davies. London: Francis Brothers and Day, 351, Oxford Street. W.

The Astronomer's Drinking Song.

Some years ago Mr. De Morgan found among the papers of a much older friend, to whom he was an executor, who never lived in London, and who was not a mathematician, a song described as having been sung at a Mathematical Society in London, on the occasion of a dinner given to a solicitor named Fletcher, who had defended an action for the Society gratuitously. On application to the late Mr. Benjamin Gompertz, who was President of the Mathematical Society (founded 1717) of Spitalfields, when it merged in the Astronomical Society, it appeared that the account was correct in every particular. About 1798 the Mathematical Society has come philosophical lectures given at their rooms, with entrance at a shilling a head. They did not know the law, until they were sued by an informer for penalties on the shillings, amounting to thousands of pounds, as having opened an unlicensed public exhibition. Mr. Fletcher, a member, described by Mr. Gompertz as a very scientific person, undertook their defence as solicitor, and managed to bring them off. He would not make any charge, and the Society gave him a dinner, which Mr. Gompertz remembered attending, though he could not undertake to remember the songs or their subjects.
Whether the following song was sung as here given cannot be ascertained. The possessor above named, in whose handwriting it seems to be, was a person very likely to have augmented it. Mr. de Morgan acknowledges various conjectural restorations of lines half-effaced by age, and the addition of the verse relative to Kepler. It is tolerably certain that some such song, containing some of the verses here given, was actually sung at the dinner. The notes, of course, are by a modern scholiast.

WHOE’ER would search the starry sky,
Its secrets to divine, Sir,
Should take his glass – I mean, should try
A glass or two of wine, Sir.
True virtue lies i’ th’ golden mean,
And man must wet his clay, Sir;
Join these two maxims and ‘tis seen
He should drink he bottle a-day, Sir.

Old Archimedes, reverent sage!
By trump of fame renowned, Sir,
Deep problems solved in every page,
And the sphere’s curved surface found, Sir:
Himself he would have far outshone,
And borne a wider sway, Sir,
Had he our modern secret known,
And drunk his bottle a-day, Sir.

When Ptolemy, now long ago,
Believed the earth stood still, Sir,
He never would have blundered so,
Had he but drunk his fill, Sir:
He’d then have felt* it circulate,
And would have learned to say, Sir,
The true way to investigate
Is to drink your bottle a-day, Sir.

*When the song was communicated to Dr. Whewell, he said this was a very good idea, of which too little was made. A separate song, in which the vertiginal proof of the earth’s motion should be extolled above the pendulum and the whirligig proofs, for facility, accessibility, perceptibility, and intelligibility, would have found favour in old time. But in our age science neither drinks nor blusters –
“Projicit ampullas et sequipedalia verba.”

Copernicus, that learned wight,
The glory of his nation,
With floods of wine refreshed his sight,
And saw the earth’s rotation.
Each planet then its orb described,
The moon got under way, Sir;
These truths from nature he imbibed,
For he drank his bottle a-day, Sir.

The noble Tycho* placed the stars
Each in its due location;
He lost the nose* by spite of Mars,
But that was no privation.
Had he but lost his mouth, I grant,
He would have felt dismay, Sir,
Bless you! he knew what hw should want
To drink his bottle a-day, Sir.

*The common epithet of his rank, - nobilis Tycho, as he was a nobleman. The writer had been at history.
*He lost it in a duel with Manderupuis Pasbergius. A contemporary, J. B. Laurus, insinuates they fought to settle which was the best mathematician. This seems odd, even to us who remember that gentlemen used to decide by the bullet which was the liar; but it must be remembered that the two mathematicians tilted “in tenebris densis,” and it is a nice problem to shave off a nose in the dark, without any other harm.

Cold water makes no lucky hits;
On mysteries the head runs:
Small drink let Kepler tune his wits
On the regular polyhedrons.
He took to wine and it changed the chime;
His genius swept away, Sir,
Though area* varying as the time
At the rate of a bottle a-day, Sir.

*An allusion to Kepler’s celebrated law of planetary motion. He had previously wasted his time on analogies between the planetary orbits and the polyhedrons. This verse is a forgery, but stoutly maintained to be genuine.

Poor Galileo, forced to rat
Before the Inquisition,
E pur si muove was the pat
He gave them in addition.
He meant – Whate’er you think you prove
The earth must go its way, Sire,
Spite of your teeth I’ll make it move,
For I’ll drink my bottle a-day, Sirs.

Great Newton, who was never beat,
Whatever fools may think, Sir,
Though sometimes he forgot to each,
He never forgot to drink, Sir.
Descartes took nought but lemonade*;
To conquer him was play, Sir:
The first advance that Newton made
Was to drink his bottle a-day, Sir.

*As great a lie as ever was told. But in 1798 a compliment to Newton without a fling at Descartes would have been held a lopsided structure.

The Pascal-forger thinks, perhaps,
That Newton must sing small, Sir,
Before ten thousand little scraps,
With signatures to all, Sir.
But they’re not worth their count in pence,
As many to one I’d lay, Sir,
That Pascal never had the sense
To drink his bottle a-day Sir*.

*This verse was entirely effaced by age, but efface is here a verb of negative value. It seems to refer to the forgeries produced in 1867, in which some genuine ignoramus represented Hannah Ayscough, the mother of Isaac Newton, by re-marriage Smith, as signing herself “Miss Anne Ascough Newton” instead of “Hannah Smith.” The consequence is, in England, a very ready belief in the forgery, and the same through all the well-informed classes in France. But we are afraid that among certain of the French, especially among those who know what the Emperor will do next, there is a conviction that English ladies always sign one husband short, and that two marriages are counted spinsterhood, provided the claim be made.

D’Alembert, Euler, and Clairaut,
Though they increased our store, Sir,
Much farther had been seen to go
Had they tippled a little more, Sir.
Lagrange gets mellow with Laplace,
And both are wont to say, Sir,
The philosophe who’d not an ass
Will drink his bottle a-day, Sir!

Astronomers! what can avail
Those who calumniate us:
Experiment can never fail
With such an apparatus.
Let those who’d have their merits known
Remember what I say, Sir;
Fair science shines on him alone
Who drinks his bottle a-day, Sir.

How light we reck of those who mock
By this we’ll make t’appear, Sir,
We’ll dine by the sidereal clock,
For one more bottle a-year, Sir.
But choose which pendulum you will,
You’ll never made your way, Sir,
Unless you drink, and drink your fill,
At least a bottle a-day, Sir.

*The sidereal day is a little shorted than the solar day, and gives 366 to the year.

Daubeny, Fugitive Poems, 179-185

By Augustus De Morgan, and online here.

The Origin of Species. A New Song.

HAVE you heard of this question the Doctors among,
Whether all living things from a Monad have sprung?
This has lately been said, and it now shall be sung,
Which nobody can deny.

Not one or two ages sufficed for the feat,
It required a few millions the change to complete,
But now the thing’s done, and it looks rather neat,
Which nobody can deny.

The original Monad, our great great grandsire,
To little or nothing at first did aspire,
But at last to get offspring he took a desire,
Which nobody can deny.

This Monad becoming a father or mother,
By budding or bursting produced such another,
And shortly there followed a sister or brother,
Which nobody can deny.

But Monad no longer designates them well,
They’re a cluster of Molecules now, or a Cell,
But which of the two, Doctors only can tell,
Which nobody can deny.

These beings increasing, grew buoyant with life,
And each to itself was both husband and wife,
And at first, strange to say, the two lived without strife,
Which nobody can deny.

But such crowding together soon troublesome grew,
And they though a division of labour would do,
So their sexual system was parted in two,
Which nobody can deny.

Thus Plato supposes that severed by fate,
Human halves run about each in search of its mate,
Never pleased till they gain their original state,
Which nobody can deny.

Execresences fast were now trying to shoot,
Some put out a feeler, some put out a foot,
Some set up a mouth, and some struck down a root,
Which nobody can deny.

Some wishing to walk manufactured a limb,
Some rigged out a fin, with a purpose to swim,
Some opened an eye, some remained dark and dim,
Which nobody can deny.

Some hydras, and sponges, and starfishes breed,
And flies, fleas, and lobsters, in order succeed,
While Ichthyosauruses follow the lead,
Which nobody can deny.

From reptiles and fishes to birds we ascend,
And quadrupeds next their dominions extend,
Till we rise up to monkeys and men, where we end,
Which nobody can deny.

Some creatures are bulky, some creatures are small,
As nature sends food for the few, or for all,
And the weakest, we know ever go to the wall,
Which nobody can deny.

A deer with a neck that is longer by half
Than the rest of the family, try not to laugh,
By stretching and stretching becomes a giraffe,
Which nobody can deny.

A very tall pig, with a very long nose,
Send forth a proboscis quite down to his toes,
And he then by name of an elephant goes,
Which nobody can deny.

The four-footed beast that we now call a whale,
Held his hind legs so close that they grew to a tail,
Which he uses for thrashing the sea like a flail,
Which nobody can deny.

Pouters, tumblers, and fantails, are from the same source,
The racer and hack may be traced to our Horse;
So men were developed from monkeys of course,
Which nobody can deny.

An ape with a pliable thumb and big brain,
When the gift of the gab he had managed to gain,
As a lord of creation established his claim,
Which nobody can deny.

But I’m sadly afraid, if we do not take care,
A relapse to low life may our prospects impair,
So of beastly propensities let us beware,
Which nobody can deny.

Their lofty position our children may lose,
And reduced to all fours must then narrow their views,
Which would wholly unfit them for filling our shoes,
Which nobody can deny.

Their vertebrae next might be taken away,
When they’d sink to a shell-fish, or spider, some day,
Or the pitiful part of a polypus play,
Which nobody can deny.

Thus losing humanity’s nature and name,
And descending through varying stages of shame,
They’d return to the Monad from which we all came,
Which nobody can deny.

LORD NEAVES.

Blackwood's Magazine, May 1861, reprinted in Daubeny, Fugitive Poems, pp. 145-150.

A Lament for the Good Old Days of William Smith

Tune – “’Twas merry in the hall"

OUR ancient English was the law
In geologic volumes,
Now Frenchman’s jabber, German’s jaw
Would drive it from our columns:
May the devil run through’t
With his cloven foot.
Give me the old strain,
And the English pith
Of old William Smith,
We shall ne’er see his like again.

The beds laid down in modern phrase
Are Bunter sands and Keupers,
And serpents, found in London clays,
Are Cainozoic vipers;
Even good Old Red
Must no more be said,
110 Such words are much too plain,
For they smack of the pith
Of old William Smith, -
We shall ne’er see his like again.

Crunch Clay was his, and rough Cornbrash.
Red Sandstone and Blue Lias,
Long, long before we heard such trash
As Jurassique and Trias;
And Blende, good lack,
Was to him Black Jack,
For he had a practical brain.
Let us drink to the pith
Of old William Smith:
May we soon see his like again.

A.C. RAMSAY
February 23, 1854

From "The Book of the Royal Hammerers", reprinted in Daubeny, Fugitive Poems, 109.

Liebig's Physiological Chemistry

Air: “The little jackdaw and the big jackdaw
They sat upon a tree.”

If you please, Mr. Praeses, make use of your time,
And don’t let’s get dry in the throttle,
But take my advice, as the claret is prime,
And order us in a fresh bottle.
We’ve Liebig’s authority, well you’re aware,
That we men of the North can consume
More alcohol far that the Southerners dare,
Without being the worse for its fume*.

This Liebig has found out our life’s golden rule,
And much will it please honest people,
To find that he proves Father Mathew a fool,
And that life is maintained by the tipple.

* From Nugae Canorae Medicae
* “If in hunting or fishing we were exposed to the same degree of cold as the Samoyedes, we should be able with ease to consume 10lbs of flesh and perhaps a dozen of tallow candles into the bargain, daily, as warmly-clad travellers have related with astonishment of these people. We should then also be able to take the same quantity of brandy or train oil without any bad effects, because the carbon and hydrogen of these substances would only suffice to keep up the equilibrium between the external temperature and that of our bodies.” – Liebig, Animal Chemistry, 2nd edit., p. 22.

For by oxygenation to vapour we turn;
This, he say, one of nature’s strange laws is;
And without hydrocarbons within us to burn,
We perish by eremacausis*.

Teetotallers dabble in coffee and tea,
And think themselves wise all the while;
But if Liebig be right, these will not do for me,
For he says that they all turn to bile*.
No! a taste of the alcohol’s nearer the thing
For a man of poetic vocation;
For your bard couldn’t laugh, and still less could he sing,
Without elements of respiration*.

Thus man’s but a bit spirit-lamp, as we see;
And lamps all require you to cram ‘em

*”In the wasted bodies of those who have suffered starvation, the muscles are shrunk and unnaturally soft, and have lost their contractibility; all those parts of the body which are capable of entering into the state of motion, have served to protect the remainder of the frame from the destructive influence of the atmosphere. Towards the end, the particles of the brain begin to undergo the process of oxidation, and delirium, mania, and death close the scene; that is to say, all resistance to the oxidizing power of the atmospheric oxygen ceases, and the chemical process of eremacausis, or decay, commences,” &c – Liebig Op. cit., p. 27.
* “Without entering minutely into the medicinal action of caffeine, it will surely appear a most striking fact, even if we were to deny its influence on the process of secretion, that this substance, with the addition of oxygen and water, can yield taurine, the nitrogenised compound peculiar to bile.”, - Liebig, Op. cit., p. 180.
* “Among the elements of respiration in our food are wine, beer, spirits.” – Liebig, Op. cit, p. 96.

With plenty of spirit of good density,
In order to alere flammam.
Then keep up the alcohol stimulus all,
Thus alone you’ll preserve your condition;
Or you’ll find yourselves soon in what Bennett would call
A state of abnormal nutrition*.
*”Treatise on Inflammation, as a Process of Abnormal Nutrition. By John Hughes Bennett, MD FESE Edinburgh, 1844.”

From Daubeny, Fugitive Poems (1869), pp. 189-191.

The Senior Wrangler to His Bride. Being a Mathematical Madrigal in the simplest form.

CHARMER, on a given straight line,
And which we will call B C,
Meeting at a common point A,
Draw the lines A C, A B.
But, my sweetest, so arrange it
That they’re equal, all the three;
Then you’ll find that, in the sequel,
All their angles, too, are equal.

Equal angles, so to term them,
Each one opposite its brother!
Equal joys and equal sorrows,
Equal hopes, ‘twere sin to smother.
Equal – oh, divine extatics –
Based on HUTTON’s Mathematics!

Punch, September 4, 1858, p. 95

Song of the Geological Lecturer (Intended for the use of Cambridge Professors)

Geology’s a noble thing
To teach in Alma Mater,
So straight I will proceed to sing
The earth and all its strata.
Of peat and chalk I’ve much to say,
Of limestone, sand, and gypsum;
‘Twill teach the student made of clay,
Cognoscere se ipsum.
Right-tooral-looral-looral-la,
Toodlery-roodlery-rilo!

Granite and rock are hard, I own,
To youths at school or college;
Bit then there’s nought so good as stone
To form the road to knowledge.
My pupils now I’ll bid adieu,
I’m not disposed to weary ‘em,
And in my next I’ll take a view
Of Buckland’s Megatherium.
Right-tooral-looral-looral-la,
Toodlery-roodlery-rilo!

Punch 10 (1846), p. 240.

The Grand Darwininan Theory

(Air: The King of the Cannibal Islands, Allegretto)

Oh! have you heard the news of late,
About our great original state?
If you have not, I will relate
The grand Darwinian theory.

Take care as you saunter along the street,
How you tread on the dust beneath your feet:
You may crush a cherub in embryo sweet,
For each atom may hold a germ complete,

Which, by some mystical process slow,
And selective power, to a monkey may grow,
And from that to a man, the truth to show
Of the grand Darwinian theory.

Chorus:

Oh! hokey, pokey, Kanyuwan,
From nothing to something, from monkey to man.
Oh! this is the great developing plan,
Of the grand Darwinian theory.


The beginning of all was a little cell,
Composed of what substance no one can tell,
Endowed with a power to develop and swell
Into general life by this theory.

With a power to select what it wished to be -
A fungus or flower, a bush or a tree,
A fowl of the air, or a fish of the sea,
A cow or a sheep, a bug or a flea,

Or, if tired of these, it may change its plan:
Be a cat or a dog, or O-rang-oo-tan,
But culminating at last in a man
By this grand Darwinian theory.

Chorus:

Oh! hokey, pokey, pow'r of selection,
Choose yourself your particular section.
A peasant, or Lord with a great connection.
By the grand Darwinian theory.

Your attention, ladies - let me win it;
Just think of this theory for a minute;
Is there really not something distressing in it -
To think that you sprang from a monkey?

That delicate hand was a monkey's paw,
Those lovely lips graced a monkey's jaw,
Those handsome ankles, so trim and neat,
One time surmounted a monkey's feet;

Those sparkling eyes a monkey did lend,
That graceful form from one did descend,
From a monkey you borrowed the Grecian bend,
By this grand Darwinian theory.

Chorus:

Oh! hokey, pokey, protoplasm,
'Tween monkeys and man there is no chasm,
Why shouldn't you clasp them to your bosom?
They're infant men by this theory.

Such murderers we - far worse than Cain,
For darker deeds our characters stain;
For thousands of brothers we've eaten and slain,
By the grand Darwinian theory.

When sitting at breakfast, and picking the wing
Of a pigeon, or grouse, or of some other thing;
Or dining on mutton or lamb, if in spring;
Or on salmon, or trout, or on cod, or on ling -

Gaze into the future, and say, can't you see
What horrible cannibals we must be,
Devouring the flesh, which may yet become we,
By the grand Darwinian theory?

Chorus:

Oh! hokey, pokey, ringo-ging,
The cannibal islands once had a King
Who ate his own kin, but to us he's no-thing,
When compared in the light of this theory.

But why should the theory end with man?
If he has been less, surely more he can,
And should be, by the great developing plan
Of the grand Darwinian theory.

Why should he not on this earth yet be,
An angel, or god, like Mercury,
With a wing on each shoulder, each ankle and knee?
Oh! how delightful then it will be,

When sighing and wishing your sweetheart to see,
To wipe your beak, and just upwards flee,
Like birds - and meet your love on a tree,
On the top of a hill, by this theory.

Chorus:

Oh! hokey, pokey, ringo-ging,
The world then literally on the wing,
No street cabs needed, or any such thing,
By the grand Darwinian theory.


John Young, C.E.

The Scientific Man; or Mrs Crucible's Lamentations. By Robert More.

Playfully

Ah! science is a lovely thing,
and shines serenely bright,
At least so many poets sing,
And they of course are right,
And yet I would not recommend
My cousin Jane or Fan
To wed that very pleasant friend
A Scientific Man.

When Crucible my heart and hand
First sought with pensive looks
I fondly strove to understand
His philosophic books;
All frivolous pursuits above,
My studies I began,
And thought it very grand to love
A Scientific Man.

3 Ah! woe is me! In luckless hour
Our cards were tied together
And Mr. Crucible and I
Were bound by Hymen’s tether;
How could that philosophic lore
My foolish heart trepan
To marry that domestic bore
A Scientific Man!

4 The honeymoon was scarcely past
When all my fairy dreams
Fled like dissolving views at last,
And stopt my learned themes;
Too late I found that sciences
We must not closely scan,
And that a bad alliance is
A Scientific Man!

5 From morn ‘till night my husband sits
As post or statue mute,
Quite lost in dull abstracted fits
About some wild pursuit;
With every new invention caught,
Or wonder working plan
That’s never perfect – yet he’s thought
A Scientific Man!

6 His nights on chemistry are spent,
Or mathematic lore,
And sometimes on the stars intent
He walks the attic floor;
I know he’ll blow us up some night,
So sleep I rarely can,
But wait, half dead with cold and fright,
A Scientific Man!

7 The house which I should like to keep
Extremely neat and clean,
In vain the servants scour and sweep –
It’s such an awful scene;
Each room is like a chemist’s shop,
Or jugglers caravan;
No argument will ever stop
A Scientific Man!

8 The electrotype with jars and bowls
Makes such a dreadful mess:
That nasty blue stuff made such holes
In my new satin dress.
The tables, chairs, and carpets too
Were burnt where e’er it ran
Ah me! I’m sure Job never knew
A Scientific Man!


ENCORE VERSES

1. A thousand foolish whirligigs
About the house are whizzing,
And little figures dancing jigs,
Keep up an endless phizzing,
Moved by Magnetic batteries –
Would they were in Chusan!
My husband’s crack’s no matter he’s
A Scientific Man!

2. I really thought the other day
He’d killed poor Grand-Mama,
Her dear old hands she chanced to lay
Upon a Leyden jar
Left charged with Electricity
By that wild Caliban
And pink of eccentricity
A Scientific Man!

3. The children too, poor little dears,
Do get such thumps and shocks!
And that steam engine I’ve my fears
Some day will catch their frocks:
Each hour they taste some pois’nous Vase,
Or tumble in some pan
Of Aquafortis – their Papa’s
A Scientific Man!

4. But hark! Oh, what a dreadful crash!
I’m sure there’s some disaster –
Here Kitty! – Jane! – another smash!
Pray run and help your Master; -
Some boiler or retort has burst,
And Crucy’s earthly span
Cut short – I dreaded from the first
A Scientific Man!

[1843]

The Anglo-Saxon Twins. Connected by the Atlantic Telegraph.

SUCCESS at last sits, like a crown,
Upon our work gigantic;
Behold the Telegraph laid down
Beneath the broad Atlantic.

Yankee doodle, &c.

Accomplished is the mighty job,
In spite of wind and weather;
So JONATHAN, we now shall throb
With sympathy together.

Yankee doodle, &c.

The two great nations not in chains
Are now as one connected,
Whereby the cause of Freedom gains,
For ‘twill be more respected.

Yankee doodle, &c.

United, brother JONATHAN,
In firm amalgamation,
I guess we Anglo-Saxons can
If need be, whip creation.

Yankee doodle, &c.

The odds are very much increased,
By our more close communion,
Against the Soldier and the Priest,
With despots linked in union.

Yankee doodle, &c.

Let but our forces be combined,
And we’ll preserve from fetters,
A no small some of human mind,
In science and in letters.

Yankee doodle, &c.

Free Press, which every bigot hates,
Free utterance of opinions,
Shall live in the United States,
And British Queen’s dominions.

Yankee doodle, &c.

May talk of lightning slick as grease
Discussions shortly finish,
And every chance of broken peace
To less than nought diminish

Yankee doodle, &c.

Now every squabble we have had
Is pretty nigh forgotten,
So let us set to work like mad,
And deal in corn and cotton.

Yankee doodle, &c.

Two thousand miles beneath the sea,
If you’re inclined as I am,
That wire will draw close you and me
As those famed twins of Siam.

Yankee doodle, &c.

So let United freemen’s cheers
Drive all the tyrants frantic,
The Telegraph as each one hears
Has spanned the great Atlantic.

Yankee doodle, &c.

From: Punch 35, August 14, 1858, p. 72.

A thousand ages underground

Tune: O God Our Help in Ages Past

A thousand ages underground,
His skeleton had lain,
But now his body’s big and round
And there’s life in him again!

His bones like Adam’s wrapped in clay
His ribs of iron stout,
Where is the brute alive today
That dares to turn him out.

Beneath his hide he’s got inside
The souls of living men,
Who dare our Saurian now deride
With life in him again?

Chorus:
The jolly old beast
Is not deceased
There’s life in him again! (roar)

From: W. J. T. Mitchell, The last dinosaur book: the life and times of a cultural icon (University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 97.

Sung at the dinner held at the Crystal Palace's monstrous display, New Year's Eve, 1853