Mary Anning

Happy Birthday, Mary Anning! To celebrate, here's a song by Artichoke about the renowned Lyme Regis fossilist.

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.

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.

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.

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