Over on Making Light / Electrolite, Jim McDonald provides this wonderful dissertation on how to live a better life through paying careful attention to English folk ballads.
If you’re a young lady, dressing yourself in men’s array and joining the army or the navy has all sorts of comic possibilities, but you yourself aren’t going to find it too darned humorous at the time.
If you are an unmarried lady and have sex, you will get pregnant. No good will come of it.
If you are physically unable to get pregnant due to being male, the girl you had sex with will get pregnant. No good will come of it. You’ll either kill her, or she’ll kill herself, or her husband/brother/father/uncle/cousin will kill you both. In any case her Doleful Ghost will make sure everyone finds out. You will either get hanged, kill yourself, or be carried off bodily by Satan. Your last words will begin “Come all ye.”
And down in the comments, this wonderful moment courtesy of the indefatigable John M. Ford:
A holiday, a holiday, and the first one of the night
The producer’s wife came to the Blue City Bar, and blinked hard in the light
And when the raving it was done, and everything got dim
The lady she saw little Matty Groves, and Instant Messaged him
“Come home with me, little Matty Groves, why not come home with me,
“Come home with me, little Matty Groves, and know me casually.”
“Oh, I can’t come home, I won’t come home and be stereotypical,
“By the ringtones on your Razer I can tell you’re a big shot’s pal.”
“But if my guy has bought a share, he’s not my CEO,
“He’s somewhere up in Aspen, nose- and tail-deep in the snow.”And a flunky crouched beneath the couch pulled out his camera phone
He swore he’d find advantage, whether truth be hid or shown
And in his hurry to carry the news, he bent his tricked-out ride
But the airbag fired, and all inspired, he logged on from inside . . .“Ballads from the Blue City”
Snort.
