Book acquired

I have recently acquired Hilaire Belloc's complete verse. It's fun stuff - vigorous, impolite, lively. I note with bemusement he thought Napoleon was a good guy and went down in flames because "the devil didn't like him" (Nelson being Satan's instrument for getting rid of this particular annoyance to his plans). With less pleasure I note the occasional flashes of snide anti-semitism. The man being dead and buried and also vigorously opposed to Nazism since it first appeared, this can be perhaps overlooked.

Today, in a spurt of displacement activity when I knew I should be working, I wrote tunes for three of Belloc's songs (he probably wrote his own tunes as well, but I don't know if those have survived; if they have I haven't heard of them). I'll record them when I can, and stick them up here once I've figured out how to put music on a blog.

One is The Pelagian Drinking Song, the other two are from The Four Men and I cannot find (individual) pages for them anywhere on the interwebs, so post them below the cut.

A song against "that Spirit of getting-on-ed-ness and making out our life at the expense of our fellow men and of our own souls"

Thou ugly, lowering, treacherous Quean
I think thou art the Devil!
To pull them down the rich and mean
And bring them to one level.
Of all my friends
That found their ends
By only following thee.
How many I tell
Already in Hell,
So shall it not be with me!

I knew three fellows were in your thrall,
Got more than they could carry,
The first might drink no wine at all.
And the second he would not marry
The third in seeking golden earth
Was drownded in the sea,
Which taught him what your wage is worth,
So shall it not be with me!

There was Peter Bell of North Chappel,
Was over hard and sparing,
He spent no penny of all his many,
And died of over caring ;
He saved above two underd pound
But his widow spent it free,
And turned the town nigh upside down,
So shall it not be with me!

Then mannikins bang the table round,
For the younger son o' the Squire,
Who never was blest of penny or pound,
But got his heart's desire.
Oh, the Creditors' curse
Might follow his hearse,
For all that it mattered to he!
They were easy to gammon
From worshipping Mammon,
So shall it not be with me!

And Absalom,
That was a King's son,
Was hanged on a tree,
When he the Kingdom would have won,
So shall it not be with me!

A Drinking Song

On Sussex hills where I was bred,
When lanes in autumn rains are red.
Where Arun tumbles in his bed,
And busy great gusts go by ;
When branch is bare in Burton Glen
And Bury Hill is a whitening, then
I drink strong ale with gentlemen ;
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny !

In half-November off I go,
To push my face against the snow,
And watch the winds wherever they blow,
Because my heart is high ;
Till I settle me down in Steyning to sing
Of the women I met in my wandering,
And of all that I mean to do in the spring,
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny !

Though times be rude and weather be rough,
And ways be foul and fortune tough,
We are of the stout South Country stuff,
That never can have good ale enough,
And do this chorus cry !
From Crowboro' Top to Ditchling Down,
From Hurstpierpoint to Arundel Town,
The girls are plump and the ale is brown :
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny !
If he does he tells a lie !