Some credit him with the foundation of European human rights, others damn him for a tyrant. I dunno, it doesn't mastter, but his is certainly a romantic tale, the moreso, I guess, for the retreat from Moscow
and the slaughter at Waterloo;
even in defeat, especially in defeat, people crave heroes and Bonaparte, despite all, fulfills that need.
I hope this weekend is not Greece's Waterloo, that she is not encircled by Prussians and Brits, her people pressed, her leaders purged and exiled but if it so proves, then, as we see with Boney at Waterloo - and Leonidas at Thermopylae - there is no success like failure and people will sing a new song of Athens; I know I will.
The Bonny Bunch of Roses, here, referred to the British Isles, the nut Boney coudn't crack
Once, for the longest time, the bard and the balladeer were the popular historians; now we have Andrew Roberts and Dr Tubby Ramirez.
There are more alluring, more textured versions of this old ballad about Napoleon's son but young Nic Jones' stark, metronoming elegance, back before-before, did the job for me.
By the margin of the ocean,
One pleasant evening in the month of June,
The pleasant-singing blackbird
His charming notes did tune.
Was there I spied a woman
All in great grief and woe,
Conversing with young Bonaparte
Concerning the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O
And then up and spoke the young Napoleon
And he took hold of his mother's hand,
"Oh mother dear, be patient
And soon I will take command.
I'll raise a terrible army
And through tremendous danger go.
And in spite of all of the universe
I'll conquer the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And when first you saw the Great Napoleon,
You fell down on your bended knee
And you asked your father's life of him
And he's granted it most manfully.
'Twas then he took an army
And o'er the frozen alps did go;
And he said, "I'll conquer Moscow
And come back for the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And so he's took three hundred thousand fighting men
And kings likewise for to join his throng.
He was as well provided for
Enough to take the whole world alone.
But when he came to Moscow
All o'erpowered by driving snow
And Moscow was a-blazing,
He lost the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"Oh my son, don't speak so venturesome,
For England she has a heart of oak,
And England, and Ireland, and Scotland,
Their unity has never been broke.
And so my son, think on, your father
In St Helena, his body it lies low,
And you will follow after,
Beware of the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And it's goodbye to my mother forever,
For I am on my dying bed.
Had I lived I might have been clever,
But now I bow my youthful head.
And while our bodies do moulder
And weeping willows over us do grow,
The deeds of brave Napoleon
Will sting the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
By the margin of the ocean,
One pleasant evening in the month of June,
The pleasant-singing blackbird
His charming notes did tune.
Was there I spied a female
All in great grief and woe,
Conversing with young Bonaparte
Concerning the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O
One pleasant evening in the month of June,
The pleasant-singing blackbird
His charming notes did tune.
Was there I spied a woman
All in great grief and woe,
Conversing with young Bonaparte
Concerning the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O
And then up and spoke the young Napoleon
And he took hold of his mother's hand,
"Oh mother dear, be patient
And soon I will take command.
I'll raise a terrible army
And through tremendous danger go.
And in spite of all of the universe
I'll conquer the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And when first you saw the Great Napoleon,
You fell down on your bended knee
And you asked your father's life of him
And he's granted it most manfully.
'Twas then he took an army
And o'er the frozen alps did go;
And he said, "I'll conquer Moscow
And come back for the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And so he's took three hundred thousand fighting men
And kings likewise for to join his throng.
He was as well provided for
Enough to take the whole world alone.
But when he came to Moscow
All o'erpowered by driving snow
And Moscow was a-blazing,
He lost the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"Oh my son, don't speak so venturesome,
For England she has a heart of oak,
And England, and Ireland, and Scotland,
Their unity has never been broke.
And so my son, think on, your father
In St Helena, his body it lies low,
And you will follow after,
Beware of the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
"And it's goodbye to my mother forever,
For I am on my dying bed.
Had I lived I might have been clever,
But now I bow my youthful head.
And while our bodies do moulder
And weeping willows over us do grow,
The deeds of brave Napoleon
Will sting the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O."
By the margin of the ocean,
One pleasant evening in the month of June,
The pleasant-singing blackbird
His charming notes did tune.
Was there I spied a female
All in great grief and woe,
Conversing with young Bonaparte
Concerning the Bonny Bunch of Roses-O
- Traditional/Arranged Nic Jones
30 comments:
Will future songs and poems hail the titanic ventures of Dave and Francois? Will some future Mr Mike make his pilgrimage to the ringing plains of Brussels and Strasbourg? Giants walk among us even now Mr I.
Everything which happens is now digitised as it happens, and clouded; it is the end of such recorded history as we have known thus far, four billion twittering voices, uploading. Time for a punitive visit from the Universe's Noise Abatement Police.
A high point, though, I think, in British popular culture, those nineteenth-century ballads, of Boney and of the Empire, mornings in May, sweet nightingales, fair maidens and bold grenadiers. I think it continued right up to the Great War, and then the national voice was privatised.
It does look black once again for Stavros. They are down to a wallet of cash per person - or thereabouts. This having been part of the reason for the spinning out of the tale. It is tactic number one in the book of economic mastery, I expect. It will all be played down to the wire though. Rumour is that power and infrastructure will start to widely fail this weekend.
Shame they are not all bankers, we coukd then just print them up warehouses full of money. It is a wilderness of mirrors, mr mongoose, I can't make head nor tail of it.
I bet you can really, Mr Ishmael, but it is just too dispiriting for the eye to see and for the ear to hear.
The banks being shut down - by the Germans really - has scared the bejesus out of everyone. Those with nothing have nothing to lose and will vote "No" for the most part. Those with something still will be frightened of losing even that and will vote "Yes", again for the most part. If Yes wins, Tsipras and Co are on their way to a losers' history, a more acceptable form of government will be installed, and the band will play on - but with the debt kicked down the road. If No wins, and it looks, tonight anyway, like it will not, the EU will crush them even flatter. Riot and disaster will ensue so that the world, the other PIGS, and even the uppity, troublesome Brits can see how cold it is out in the dark at night - but really so that they can all see what happens when you mess with The Man. Either way the country is torn in two, and fucked for sure. And again, either way, the debt is never repaid. (The referendum question doesn't help, does it? Such a student politics, TUC composite-motion-46a-and-49b, silly-arse enquiry.)
Just a thought. If a man got elected on a whipped together majority of all sorts and knew he only had a few months at the tiller, a year or two at most, he could do worse than sacrifice his tenure for the effective removal of a nation's debt. Everything remains the same except the debt is repayable in 2075. It would not be a bad outcome, or legacy. I fear though that Tsipras is no Leonidas.
They should get those PPI folk onto it. Missold an insurance policy? No…missold the whole fucking loan.
Iceland jailed their govment who got them into their mess and are now doing nicely thank you very much.
Become a pariah state and dissolve into anarchy will be the order of the day. A pariah state of the EU wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But they’ll pressurise the Greek border with migrants from N.Africa then offer assistance with conditions.
The amount owed is much less than the Q fucking E that was foisted upon us (Uk). For quantative easing read…big fucking loan that was needed to reward fuckwit banker bastards who couldn’t and can’t understand how to do the job they do every day.
I don’t know when the pattern emerged. Long time ago likely…e.g. ER the 1st inherited a Great Britain with a busted economy and a deficit. Yes a deficit…it’s an old concept. Instead of her first declaration being..”Stick thyne deficit up thyne arse” She went to repay it and more…by the rape and pillage of those countries without ships and guns.
Should we complain…not if you’re not on the receiving end.
The Greeks are on a hiding to nothing. Fucked whichever way it falls. One thing the EU can’t let them have is a voice.
That's very goid, thank you, mr mongoose and sorry, I took to my Sofa of Infinite Recuperation, last night, before you posted, measured and calculated, like a phantom engineer
Some talk of Alexander, though, and some of Hercules, of Hector and Lysander and such great names as these, but it was the rhymers and word-slingers wove the greatness around them and Tsipras may yet be Leonidas, especially if, as you say, he holds the pass long enough for his enemies to be shamed, not that they know Shame, of course.
Another thing, though, is that this plays-out way beyond the blue Aegean, the whole wide world is watching, not just petulant forth-form polemicists, like that prat on QT last night, lecturing the grown-ups about credit card economics, impertinent little shit and many will be hoping for anything bar an orderly resolution of Greed's endless crisis, more and more must think, as I do, that the resources and peoples of the entire planet cannot be bent to the will of a handful who insist that they have more than they could ever need, many will hoping that the time will arise when, like Pharoah's tribe, they'll be drownded in the tide, and like Go-liath, they'll be conquered.
Yo, mr doug shoulders, the one thing positive to emerge from this is that - for those interested - this charade really does floodlight the worthlessness of the Labour party, whose members and MPs should all be saying exactly as you do, above, but are too busy, re-branding themselves, for Office. Even Corbyn couldn't bring himself to say anything worthwhile about all this, just more of his greybeard hand-wringing. The Progressive Tribesmen are a bit quiet, too, funded, as they are, by Murdoch and Trump and Scotbus, scabby wee Gnasher probably disnae ken where Greece is. Left of Centre, aye, Right.
Don’t we always remind ourselves that Greece was the cradle Democracy?
I’d be interested to see if their elected allow them the vote on whether or not to pay back the thieving moneygrubbing fuckpig bankerbastards their made up out of thin air loans…not on your fucking Nellious Cretin..
Cretins..that’s what they calls us isn’t it?...as I recall.
I’d imagine It’d be rather hot, tooled up in riot gear midsummer down there. Something to consider if Stavros is thinking about taking to the streets.
They have a history, don't they, the Greeks, ancient and modern, of street guerrillaism? Unlike ourselves, scolded, chided, dragooned by our betters. I suppose the best we can hope for, in order to wipe the smirk from Junky George Osborne's spunkface, is contagion, in Spain or Italy, and perhaps a deft intervention at the edges from Gay Vlad.
.
Calculation is a disease not easily cured, Mr I. It's v northern European too. I was reading the other day somewhere that the great hordes of EU mongrels - many of whom would call themselves left-of-centre, socialist even - just cannot fathom that the Greeks will not bend to the project. The calculation of northern European industrialised social justice being effectively that old Marxist driver of I-know-best. The EU really do think that they know best but they know best about their great used-to-be-socialist project and not about how to be a democracy. For the people must have by the people or you are lost when the road gets hard. (This is largely what is wrong with the 21st Century Left btw.)
The Greeks have been a country of sorts for what, 2500 years or so? They do not need telling how to do it. "Corrupt", "lazy", "retire too early". Do fuck off and run your own gaff for more than 50 years before you start pontificating. We'll listen when you've grown up, thanks. It is a form of colonialism by debt. Thou shalt. By force of money. The only way out is to tell them to stuff it. Tsipras should tell his people that and be damned.
I love it when Uncle Sam, five minutes old, starts lecturing and then bombing and torturing Mesapotamia into the one true faith. God help the region of the Tigris and Euphrates, if the hag, Hillary, whines and bribes and cheats her way into the White House, she'll make the chimp, Dubya, look like Mother Theresa
It wasn't an insult, about engineering and calculation and I hadn't considered that people from the South thought in less channeled and disciplined lines than ourselves but I suppose they do, which bodes well for a No! Fuck Off vote, away from the merciless city, anyway. My paternal ancestors are Norsemen, then Norseman-French, then Scots-Ulster and largely pure Scottish, on my mother's side. Not a plate-smashing, ouzo-swigging man-dancer among them; prey, ever, to the Illusion of Reason, I am, but as you point out, not everybody is like us, gullible, enthusiastically purchasing each succeeding Full Spectrum of Measures, upon whose promises of Paradise, you will not hear a laugh.
Reading some of the Greek English-language press, it seems that it's not so widespread a view in Greece that the government must fall if the vote is Yes. And some people apparently think the banks will open on Monday with 1:1 euro-drachmas issued - whatever happens on Sunday. Like the Confederate dollar, this would last - much reduced in value by inflation - until the war is lost. And if it were not to be lost...
No offence was taken, Mr Ishmael. Just don't say I never warned you.
I didn't know, until yesterday, that Greece was only allowed to print small denomination Euros, mr mongoose, the bigger ones have to ceme from Angela's handbag. I suppose I should've known but I didn't. Some other fucker issuing or not issuing your cash, as the mood takes them. That really is an invitation to the blues.
I will hie me awa, look at yon Greek newspapers.
ps, on measuring, I have been trying to install and invisibly support a five metre long shelf, a bit of rebating around pre-existing archetrave at the corners and I simply cannot measure the length with a normal tape. Off to buy one of those laser ones, before I go mad. Wonder how the Japs do it. Ah, so, desuka.
As Mr Mike reminded me back down the road the Magic Money will only be created to ensure the bankster suitclerks don`t lose out and fuck the Greek people. It would be nice to think this could start the political tectonic plates shifting, a Euro Spring of people telling their governments to fuck the debt and punishing the bankster filth for what they have inflicted on us since the Great Tits Up.
But it won`t, except maybe in Greece alone, in Britain suit worship is embedded in the national psyche, the suitclerk, the grease-grubbing crony capitalist, the smirking dosh juggler dominates the land like no baron, union or landed, no prince of the church ever did.
The Euro filth, Juncker, Merkel and our own Ham and Pansy Faced wankers have not the wit or imagination or competence to handle the Greek business. They are but hopeless neo liberal wankers, burbling their quack nostrums, paying the debts and all that crap and it is now moving into the realms of geo politics and their thick little brains cannot cope with that. Dangerously, the only ruler who is an old fashioned power politician is Bad Vlad; a similar cunt like Nixon could have handled him, but Top Hat Boy ? Fucking hell, that would be almost cruel to watch.
And if Farrage can lift himself out of the puddle of booze he`s face down in in some Brussels bistro this is mannah from heaven: " see what the Eurocracy really think of the sufferings of ordinary people ? ".
And I think that the people of the south are old Europe, Catholic/Orthodox/Roman Europe. They have 2000 years of experience of the bullshit while we proddy northerners have only just stopped setting fire to their priests. They value freedom more than money and security when all is at risk. In the end, given a free hand their kids will sort it out and get on. As Freddie's cat said - freedowm will get through times with no money but money won't get through times with no freedom. WWII too is still more of a personal memory there than it is here. It's like Ireland - the Black and Tans never thundered around your grandma's house, I'll bet. It's cultural memory.
The death of nations takes a long time to show on the surface: for those in south eastern Europe it has been half a millennium, and even then not everyone sees it. But dead they surely are.
I believe that progress and survival require fewer borders, not more but there is a terrible sorrow in what you say, mr tdg.
I left this in the wrong pigeon hole......silly old fool.
Alphons said...
call me ishmael said...
It remains a measure of my naivety that I simply do not understand why Germany wasn't dismantled in 1945; if ever a bunch of tribes had forfeited the right to nationhood, surely it was these fucking vermin.
Interesting that you should say that Mr Ishmael. I was at grammar school for the last two or three years of the war. The "A" stream of the last three years were "classics" oriented and the "B" stream, which I happily managed to get into, was "science" oriented. Strangely enough the one language that the "B" stream had to learn was German. When I enquired "Why" I was told that they were very good scientist and unless I learned German I would not be able to read the works of the worlds greatest scientist.
At the time I thought to myself "What a lot of bullshit! Germany will be destroyed forever at the end of this war."
Just shows how ignorant I really was about reality!!!
4 July 2015 at 14:48
There was enough money in the family for my older sister and brother to have piano lessons, mr alphons, but by the time I arrived there was none left fir that sort of thing. At my grammar school I wanted, more than anything, to take music but was forced, instead, to learn German; even now, the matter is near the top of my Big Book of Regrets
Box, box of regrets.
Yes Mr I, in some ways, the 'Olive Line' is as big a divide as the old 'Iron Curtain' was. One of the reasons why the Euro-Zone will never work nor, for that matter, the EU - at least as it is presently structured. It seems to me that Greece is now a broken-backed economy. In relative, though not absolute, terms it has been flattened. Any further negotiations are, as Mr Mongoose alludes, an irrelevance - pure theatre. If I were Mr Tsipras, I would be inclined to escape from the EU's clutches as there is good business to be done elsewhere outside of the sanctions regime - even this only consists of bartering wine, olive oil and feta cheese for petrochemicals.
Regarding this business of the USA being only five minutes old & therefore whipsnappers and upstarts and all that... I don't think so. Let's see - the founding fathers - Washington, Jefferson et al. By the standards of their time (or any time for that matter) highly cultured and educated men - as at home in the capitals of Europe, as their own 'colonial' world. Harvard University founded in 1636 - how many universities were there in England at that time? Actually the USA is one of the older polities on the planet. The USA may well be the 'United States of Amnesia', as the old pouffe, Gore Vidal laments, but it is far from being young.... in some respects the War of Independence looks more like a second civil war amongst the English peoples... As regards the bigger picture, I'll take my cue from Mr Yardarm, somehow Nixon and Kissinger seem preferable to Obama and trouser woman...
It appears that Stavros held his nerve Mr I, and gave a clear Fuck Off to the Herman led EU.
There's hope for us all, maybe.
Bad Gay Vlad could be the man to turn to for the Greeks.
Well, for all its ancient luminaries, the United States is the modern home of ethnic cleansing, slavery, apartheid, torture, war crines and remains the only nation to have detonated a nuclear weapon over a civilian population, seems pretty savage to me, mr sg. I can think of a couple of symphonists, Copeland and Bernstein, some writers, certainly, but no painters to soeak of; there is NASA. but there are also mefiaeval, racist, maximum security torture facilities called prisons, her armies and black ops psychobastards have rampaged all over the world and its biggest industry is pornography. Fuck'em, the Great Satan, I wouldn't care if they went up in flames tomorrow and with any luck the crazy bastards'll all shoot each other.
Isn't it nice, mr inmate, as SpunkFace wages class war on generations made unemployed by his Devilmother, Maggie, Stavros mans-up. Vlad or the Chinks, can't be any worse than the criminals of Europe. Bravo, vive le contagion.
Yes it won't be pretty for a while but the getting of freedom never is. Very good news and, of course, the Hun is already forecasting catastrophe. Well, they have a knack for it.
Yes, I heard some beardy wretch, simpering about a humanitarian package, like he gave a fuck about humans. Good news, indeed.
I don't think I said anything about them being 'good' Mr I - albeit my point may have been a tad pedantic. Further pedantry - a quick wiki on the matter of the largest industry in the USA says 'real estate' is the biggest (13% ofGDP) followed by, and get this for the 'free market, land of the free', state and local government (9% of GDP). No mention of the military-industrial complex, of which Eisenhower warned, the size of which was a major factor in the demise of the USSR... I suspect that pornography forms part of the 'Arts and Entertainment' category (4% of GDP) - so not the biggest but I'll wager that it 'punches', or maybe 'fists' above its weight (save perhaps in what, I gather, is known as the SSBBW sector though I have not, in the interests of taste and decency, researched this market sector thoroughly - or should that be 'extensively' - best left to that Louis Theroux bloke methinks...). I think, by the way, that these categories may stretch our understanding of what 'industry' consists of.
Maybe I misunderstood it, maybe what I heard was that porn was the industry participated-in by more than any other - more people buy or wetch porn than buy cars, that sort of thing;it certainly seems to be a parallel universe, s fifth dimension, it's iconography leeching-out, into, for instance, Abu Graib and American popular music.I will come back to this,. mr sg, I am up the road at the moment.
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