Books from the bag – a contest
One of the delights of Bouchercon was the sturdy book bag each attendee received full of magazines and books from the likes of John Harvey, Peter Robinson and Sophie Hannah. Among the treats was Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance, a copy of which I'd bought just before the convention. You can win my extra copy if you're the first to answer a skill-testing question.Since I've posted recently about music, sports and Oscar Wilde's native country of Ireland, today's question covers all three: Which two sports are mentioned in the classic Irish ballad "Whiskey in the Jar"?
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We have a winner! Loren in Florida knew that:His book will be in the mail shortly. Congratulations."Now there's some take delight
in the carriages a rolling / and others take delight in the hurling and the bowling."
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
Labels: contests, Gyles Brandreth, Ireland, music, sports
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 4:18 AM
14 Comments:
boy I had to listen hard for that one Peter!
"Whack for my daddy-o"
Never actually considered it a sport as such...
Come-along-everybody
Mush a ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy'o
Whack for my daddy'o, there's
Whisky in the jar, o
Mush a ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy'o
Whack for my daddy'o, there's
Whisky in the jar, o
Mush a ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy'o
Whack for my daddy'o, there's
Whisky in the jar, o
Mush a ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy'o
Whack for my daddy'o, there's
Whisky in the jar, o
Ali
That was the idea, Kerrie. I wanted to make the winner work for his or her book, to have a bit of fun, and to listen to one of my favorite songs. I hope everyone enjoyed it.
Whack for my daddy-o is correct, but you did not phrase your response in the form of a question, so we cannot accept it.
I think the nonsense words in Irish ballads edge out those in doo-wop, though it would be fun to organize an NCAA-tournament-style bracket to decide the issue. I'd have "whack fa lol dee dah" from "Rocky Road to Dublin" defeating "Shama Lama Ding Dong" on the way to meeting "Whack for my daddy-o" in the final. Lots of whacking in Irish ballads.
Ali, you may recall that Ken Bruen invoked Luke Kelly during the Booze and Crime Fiction panel. Later -- at the bar, of course -- I chatted with him about that interesting subject. If we had just been able to keep the discussion going a bit longer, perhaps we could have got a nice sing-along going. We must keep this in mind for future conventions.
Congratulations, Loren! Am looking forward to the Burke and
McFetridge books. Thank you, Peter! :))
Yep, I have a raft of books to send out as soon as I get the correct addresses to send them to. Come on, help me get my house cleaned out!
Read both books before I bolted for the Baltimore Bouchercon and loved them both equally. Not many could make Wilde so endearing and palatable as a protagonist in a mystery.
Thanks for the thumbs-up. I figured the fates had willed that I read this series since, on my last two trips before Bouchercon, I was shown the places first where Wilde died and then where he was born. The Wilde statue in Dublin is not a typical piece of public sculpture, to say the least.
I'd have thought that Wilde, as colorful a character as he was, would be easy to make into an endearing mystery protagonist. I shall keep your comment in mind as I read. Then maybe I'll go read some Wilde.
Hmmm.
On my Ipod Thin Lizzy sings it thus:
"Now some men like the fishin and some men like the fowlin
And some men like ta hear a cannon ball a roarin."
We may have to go to Harold Bloom to get the canonical reading.
I'm not caging for a book, I'm sure the Wilde is very good but those of us who lived in the UK and were unemployed for periods in the 80's and 90's saw far too much of Mr. Brandreth and his eccentric sweater collection on the cult afternoon quiz show 'Countdown'. The trauma of those long afternoons would be too much for many of us to fully appreciate GB's novel.
Yep, Harold Bloom is a man to set the canon a-roaring, or to roar about the canon.
I'll go with the Dubliners' version, since that's the one to which I linked. I have discovered versions that render the lyrics differently, including tinkering with the sports line. But that's the way of folk songs.
YouTube enables easy and interesting comparisons of lyrics among different versions. My favorite is the line from "Peggy Gordon" variously sung "'Cause when I'm drinking, I am thinking" and "'Cause when I'm drinking, I am seldom thinking." Either version can be made to accord nicely with the meaning of the song.
I hadn't realized that Brandreth might have that effect. As it happens, I've just read some passages in a crime novel set in the Depression very much in line with your sentiments about Gyles Brandreth.
How do you bring "Whack for my daddy-o" and Gyles Brandreth's 'Countdown' career together in one synergetic moment? Why like THIS of course.
That is a dopey sweater, all right. I suppose if I were out of work and confronted with whimsy of that kind, I'd feel the way I do now when my editor-in-chief tells me this paper has a future or that copy editors are its backbone.
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