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

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The Sound of Science

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Scientific Lessons in Modesty

By Julie Walsh and Barry Sheils. Runner-up in the History of Science Songs Competition!

Tune - Yankee Doodle Dandy

In days gone by man stood in all his narcissistic glory,
Then he was dealt three wounding blows by scientific theory.
The first came with Copernicus,
The second from our mate Darwin,
Then came Freud’s Unconsciousness,
To stick the final nail in.

In the sixteenth century, just with his naked eye,
Nicolas Copernicus did turn towards the sky, (he)
considered the Celestial Spheres; their majesty, their wonder,
But what he saw revealed for sure old Aristotle’s blunder.
Copernicus did knock us from
The top of the cosmic hierarchy
In fact the earth goes round the sun
That’s heliocentricity!

Charles Darwin saw inheritance, variation and selection,
As making up the golden rule of species adaptation.
In 1859 he wrote the Origin of the Species,
Man’s descent from animals was the underlying thesis.
All life shares a common source
Mankind is no exception
Since Darwin we cannot divorce
Ourselves from natural selection

Finally Freud came along and undermined man’s ego,
He took it on himself to prove the force of our libido.
He looked into our dreams and saw our unconscious desires,
He laid us down upon his couch and showed that we are liars
Now we’ve seen the fall of man
Into his modern paralysis
Science brings its own demands
(Thank God) for psychoanalysis!

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 .

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.

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.