(A wandery sort of entry that goes nowhere in particular and ends abruptly.)<\/p>\n
Cindy Kallet<\/a> is going to be performing in half a dozen places in northern California in the first half of November, mostly house concerts. I'm not sure whether I'll go to any of them, but if the schedule fits I probably will.<\/p>\n I first encountered Kallet's music in college; a pair of student folksingers, Gabby & Joanna, regularly sang a couple of Kallet's songs, \"Out on the Farthest Range\" and \"Shores of Africa\" (which later turned out to be two of my favorites of Kallet's). But the Gabby & Joanna song that's been running through my head lately, for no clear reason, is a song that appears to have been popularized by the Kingston Trio: \"To Morrow<\/a>,\" by Bob Gibson. (It was also performed on the Muppet Show<\/cite> at some point.)<\/p>\n It's a song about a traveller who wants to go to a town called Morrow, and who has trouble interacting with the ticket-seller:<\/p>\n Said he to me, \"Now let me see if I have heard you right.<\/p>\n You'd like to go to Morrow and return tomorrow night.<\/p>\n You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back today<\/p>\n for the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way.\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n As usual, I imagine it doesn't work as well without music as with (the tune is bouncy and catchy), but you can get the general idea.<\/p>\n Despite the various cute twists of phrasing, the song's not all that hard to follow if you're paying attention. But there are a couple of somewhat archaic words in it that I hadn't encountered before, and that's the real point of this entry.<\/p>\n I think G&J used to sing the beginning of the second verse as:<\/p>\n I went down to the station for a ticket and a ride;<\/p>\n For tips regarding Morrow I stepped up to the guide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Or at least that's the way I remember hearing it. Turns out it's really:<\/p>\n So I went down to the station for my ticket and applied<\/p>\n for tips regarding Morrow not expecting to be guyed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n To guy<\/span> someone, it turns out, is to make fun of them.<\/p>\n And then near the end of the song, I think they used to sing:<\/p>\n He had no right in telling me I was a howling jay<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n I always wondered about that; why a jay? Why howling? Turns out the original line (if the Internet, it is right) goes:<\/p>\n That man was right in telling me that I was a-howling jay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n which was just oddly enough punctuated to make me go look up jay<\/span>, which turns out to serve as either a noun or an adjective referring to a rube or a hick.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (A wandery sort of entry that goes nowhere in particular and ends abruptly.) Cindy Kallet is going to be performing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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