A Little Song

[Danilynne]

Hiyas! My name is Danielle, and I am new to these forums. I was guided here by a friend of mine from Lord Of The Rings Online. Her name here is Tinidril, and she is part of the musical group that I play with in that game.

One of the things we like to do while playing our songs is to do rewrites of lyrics to make them more LOTR-oriented. A song that I had recently done got a good deal of positive feedback from the other musicians and the crowds listening to our concert. Tinidril suggested that I share it woth you.

The original tune is called Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah by Allan Sherman, which is itself a novelty song rewrite of a classical piece called Dance of the Hours (thanks to another gamer/musician friend for pointing that out to me). The midi file of the song can be found at http://www.garyrog.50megs.com/midi1.html for anyone who wants to listen to it. The lyrics that I wrote are titled Hello Gaffer as written by Samwise to his father.

HELLO GAFFER

Hello Gaffer
It's your Sam-kins
I have gone with
Frodo Baggins
We're with Pippin
And with Merry
The Black Riders chased us to the Buckland Ferry

We went hiding
At Crickhollow
Didn't think that
They would follow
Those black horses
Hate the water
But they crossed the Bridge so we ran from the slaughter

In the Forest
Old Man Willow
Made us sleepy
Where's my pillow?
And the trees there
Tried to kill us
Bombadil-O came along and had to free us

We met his wife
She's a beauty
Even though he's
Kind of fruity
Always rhyming
Always prancing
But with Goldberry he wants to be romancing.

In the night
We had to face a scary wight
Had to replace my underwear
I thought that we were dead
Into the darkness we all sped
Then we heard
A crazy voice that was absurd
But we rejoiced when in came Tom
To make the shadows flee
He killed the dread banshee

From the barrow
We went running
Ancient daggers
We were clutching
Monsters want us
To be Hob-Chow
I am thinking that I'm ready to come home now

Wait a minute
There's the Pony
I smell bacon
I smell coney
I hear singing
Oh that's better
Dearest Gaffer, kindly disregard this letter

[bridge]

Barli warned us
'Bout the Ranger
He said Strider
Was a danger
Not to trust him
We learned better
Gandalf told us all about him in a letter

We set out to
Cross the Marshes
Why don't hobbits
Wear galoshes?
Lots of insects
Were a-biting
All-in-all we found the swamp quite uninviting

On a hill
Called Weathertop we laid quite still
But like a fool I lit a fire
And so the Riders came
They drew their swords to kill and maim
Strider fought
Them off but Frodo's shoulder caught
A tiny bit of Morgul-knife
He wasn't very well
We made for Rivendell

Past the Last Bridge
Are the Trollshaws
Tales of monsters
Caused us to pause
Through the forest
Riders chased us
Glorfindel came just in time and he is no wuss

There's the valley
Well I'll be darned
Made it to the
House of Elrond
I thought we were
Done with our chore
Silly Frodo wants to take the Ring to Mordor!

[Primula]

Welcome, welcome Danilynne!


Any friend of Tini's is a friend of ours. Pleased to make your acquaintance... and now you have that song running through my head! Ha!

[tinidril]

Yay! You made it in!

What Dani didn't say is that the midi is actually of the entire Dance of the Hours and not just the part that Allen Sherman used for his song, so she wrote the first part to fit the song "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" and had all this music left to fill... since she was just starting to learn how to prepare files for in-game use, she hadn't yet learned how to edit a midi to make it shorter. So, she burned the midnight oil and came up with enough verses to take Same from Hobbiton to Rivendell!! I was thoroughly impressed, hehehe.

I looked up the chords on Google, found some that were relatively correct, and fully intend to sing this epic for my Mythopoeic Society friends this next Saturday

If anyone in the Portland area wants to hear it, we will be meeting at The Tabor Space at 5411 SE Belmont after 3pm (from 2-3 there's a jazz band playing, might get there early to listen to them).

[Danilynne]

Tini, maybe sometime while you are playing this song, d'ya think you could record it and pop it up on YouTube? I would love to hear this done by someone who can actually play an instrument and not just horribly mangle it vocally (moi)

[daughter_of_kings]

Welcome, Dani!

I think you did a fantastic job with this adaptation, and I think it would be marvelous if you kept writing verses until Sam comes home.

[tinidril]

Dani, I don't have the means to record it... darn.

[Danilynne]

Welcome, Dani!

I think you did a fantastic job with this adaptation, and I think it would be marvelous if you kept writing verses until Sam comes home.

D'ya think so? Maybe I will!

Dani, I don't have the means to record it... darn.

Poo...

[agape4rivendell]

WELL - that was awesome! I absolutely loved it. So much better to be humming about this than hello mudder.....

I have always hated that song - it's one of those you never forget - that haunts you and makes you want to pull your hair out and scream....

Their Taking the Hobbits to Isengard is another one. AND the never to be forgotten - Where There's A Whip, There's A Way.

Slap yourself on the back, have a drink on me, and keep writing this. I too want it to end with the return to the Shire!

Bless you for sharing this and WELCOME.............

[daisy gold]

What a wonderful reworking of the song. I can’t stop humming that tune now.
I do hope you keep on writing more verses for Sam.