Dashing Away With the Smoothing Iron

[djm]

And of course there's the other possibility, too.

Huh? What other possibility? No, no, don't tell me. I don't think I want to hear about it!

djm

[Nanohedron]

And of course there's the other possibility, too.

Huh? What other possibility? No, no, don't tell me. I don't think I want to hear about it!

djm

Oh, come, now. That the singer might have been a woman is hardly an awful prospect to consider. Well, these days, anyway.

[djm]

That the singer might have been a woman is hardly an awful prospect to consider.

<whew>Oh, okay. Right. I thought you were going to go in a totally wrong direction. </whew>

djm

[Nanohedron]

That the singer might have been a woman is hardly an awful prospect to consider.

<whew>Oh, okay. Right. I thought you were going to go in a totally wrong direction. </whew>

djm

My, my. I must be more prim than I thought. What did you have in mind?

[Lambchop]

What's a smoothing iron, anyway? Is this something that could improve my hair?

[Lambchop]

Oh. Nevermind. I read the first page. Clothes iron.

[Wombat]

That the singer might have been a woman is hardly an awful prospect to consider.

<whew>Oh, okay. Right. I thought you were going to go in a totally wrong direction. </whew>

djm

My, my. I must be more prim than I thought. What did you have in mind?

Well here's one other direction.




And here is another.




Men can get pretty excited around irons.

[StevieJ]

Sorry to veer away from the kinky track this has taken, but this thread has brought back a flood of childhood memories. The song was part of a book called something like "Folk Songs for Schools" put together, I'm fairly sure, by the BBC. I can remember me and my classmates in primary school in rural Norfolk singing it with gusto at about the age of 8.

Others from the same book, which have also stayed with me ever since, were The Mermaid (? "And the raging winds did roar, and the stormy winds did blow, And we jolly sailor boys were up aloft aloft, and the landlubbers lying down below below below" or something close), Widdecombe Fair (Uncle Tom Bollocky and all) and, much more beautiful and mysterious, Shenandoah. Hackneyed as they come, I understand, but I still love it and find it intensely moving for reasons I cannot pinpoint. In a different class altogether from Dashing Away with....

Hmm on reflection Waltzing Matilda might have been in there too....

They also used to get us doing "country dancing" on summer days in the playground to what I'm fairly sure were 78 rpm records. The one tune that has stuck in my head from those days is The Yarmouth Reel (aka Galopede). Yarmouth was the local fishing port - and holiday resort for the working masses from the North.

Ramble over.
Steve

[Innocent Bystander]

Thanks for that memory, Steve. Yes, Shenandoah was very moving, for reason still unclear.

I have a sheaf of these BBC booklets from the 60s and 70s, and even one from the 50s. The Mermaid was certainly there, and Shenandoah, and Allouette, and Raggle-taggle Gypsies. I'll have a look tonight to see if my copies have "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron". I don't recall it being there.
Others I remember:
Down in Demerara
Waltzing Matilda
Twankydillo
A Keeper did a-shooting go
Drink to me only with thine eyes
The Vicar of Bray

[djm]

Did they have The Dirty Vicar sketch?

djm

[Wombat]

Thanks for that memory, Steve. Yes, Shenandoah was very moving, for reason still unclear.

I have a sheaf of these BBC booklets from the 60s and 70s, and even one from the 50s. The Mermaid was certainly there, and Shenandoah, and Allouette, and Raggle-taggle Gypsies. I'll have a look tonight to see if my copies have "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron". I don't recall it being there.
Others I remember:
Down in Demerara
Waltzing Matilda
Twankydillo
A Keeper did a-shooting go
Drink to me only with thine eyes
The Vicar of Bray

We sang some of those in primary school in Australia. Certainly Alluette and (of course) Waltzing Matilda.

[Innocent Bystander]

None of the ones in my collection had "Dashing away with the smoothing Iron".
But they did have "The Drummer and the Cook" - the one with the chorus "..With her one eye on the clock, and the other up the chimney..."

and to my surprise they had the words to "The Little Red Lark".
(I should have looked at them more closely).

[emmline]

To veer off on a slight tangent here...
When I was in grade school, a standard that appeared in the music books from which we sang was "Marching to Pretoria."
We must have covered that one enough times in my elementary years that it's still pretty well stuck in my head.
So, here's my question:
Why would a bunch of American schoolkids in the 60's be singing about the South African Boer wars?
I had no clue where Pretoria was back then, and the lyrics were meaningless to me.

[dubhlinn]

Thanks for that memory, Steve. Yes, Shenandoah was very moving, for reason still unclear.

I have a sheaf of these BBC booklets from the 60s and 70s, and even one from the 50s. The Mermaid was certainly there, and Shenandoah, and Allouette, and Raggle-taggle Gypsies. I'll have a look tonight to see if my copies have "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron". I don't recall it being there.
Others I remember:
Down in Demerara
Waltzing Matilda
Twankydillo
A Keeper did a-shooting go
Drink to me only with thine eyes
The Vicar of Bray

We sang some of those in primary school in Australia. Certainly Alluette and (of course) Waltzing Matilda.

I can remember singing most of them in my schooldays as well.

To bring Emms query into it, I believe that the content of these songs was not so important. The important thing was that they were easy to learn and sing along with thus developing an interest in singing in young children.
The Weavers and the Smothers Brothers both recorded versions of "Marching through Pretoria" and I imagine that the verses about us all singing along together were the important bit and not the reference to Pretoria.
Another reason could be that these songs are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain and thus incur no royalty payments to the composer.

Slan,
D.

[Innocent Bystander]

Another reason could be that these songs are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain and thus incur no royalty payments to the composer.

Slan,
D.

That is probably a big part of it. But the BBC booklets did have extracts from "The Bartered Bride" by Smetana.