Love Conquers All Part 20

The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never have written:

_Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy, Says, "My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O!

So foot-on-the-gra.s.s, Foot-on-the-gra.s.s, Foot-on-the-gra.s.s is my fancy, O!_"

Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal of that "dancy-o" stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it all back on the old folk at home and they can't say a word.

But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle's time would have repudiated the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives Rip to say in which "Katy-did"

and "Katy-didn't" figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you have time to stop laughing, by one about "whip poor Will"

(whippoorwill--get it?). If "Rip Van Winkle" is ever produced again, Ed Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive.

Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye's name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye's characters is named "Dirck Spuytenduyvil." Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, "Mynheer Yonkers" and "Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street." The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.

The basic idea of "Rip Van Winkle" would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor's prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain. Here are Hendrick's very words of invitation:

_You'll be right welcome. I will let you taste A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.

Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof Forgets all lapse of time And wanders ever in the fairy season Of youth and spring.

Come join me in the mountains At mid of night And there I promise you the Magic Flask_.

And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering "in the fairy season," as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has "made a little something at home which you couldn't tell from the real stuff." Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty years. You ought to see a man I know.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading of "Rip Van Winkle" may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

x.x.xIX

LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT

With Scant Apology to the Book Section of the _New York Times_.

"OLD BLACK TILLIE"

H.G.L.--When I was a little girl, my nurse, used to recite a poem something like the following (as near as I can remember). I wonder if anyone can give me the missing lines?

"_Old Black Tillie lived in the dell, Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!

Something, something, something like a lot of h.e.l.l, Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!

She wasn't very something and she wasn't very fat But_--"

"VICTOR HUGO'S DEATH"

M.K.C.--Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a little shack in Colorado?

"I'M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD"

J.R.A.--Can anyone help me out by furnis.h.i.+ng the last three words to the following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?

"'_I'm sorry that I spelt the word, I hate to go above you, Because--' the brown eyes lower fell, 'Because, you see, ---- ---- ----.'_"

"G.o.d'S IN HIS HEAVEN"

J.A.E.--Where did Mark Twain write the following?

"_G.o.d's in his heaven: All's right with the world._"

"SHE DWELT BESIDE"

N.K.Y.--Can someone locate this for me and tell the author?

"_She dwelt among untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove, To me she gave sweet Charity, But greater far is Love._"

"THE GOLDEN WEDDING"

K.L.F.--Who wrote the following and what does it mean?

"_Oh, de golden wedding, Oh, de golden wedding, Oh, de golden wedding, De golden, golden wedding_!"

ANSWERS

"WHEN GRANDMA WAS A GIRL"

LUTHER F. NEAM, Flus.h.i.+ng, L.I.--The poem asked for by "E.J.K." was recited at a Free Soil riot in Ashburg, Kansas, in July, 1850. It was ent.i.tled, "And That's the Way They Did It When Grandma Was a Girl," and was written by Bishop Leander B. Rizzard. The last line runs:

"_And that's they way they did it, when Grandma was a girl_."

Others who answered this query were: Lillian W. East, of Albany; Martin B. Forsch, New York City, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Nahant.

"LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING"

Roger F. Nilkette, Presto, N.J.--Replying to the query in your last issue concerning the origin of the lines:

"_Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate.

Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait_."

I remember hearing these lines read at a gathering in the Second Baptist Church of Presto, N.J., when I was a young man, by the Reverend Harley N. Ankle. It was said at the time among his paris.h.i.+oners that he himself wrote them and on being questioned on the matter he did not deny it, simply smiling and saying, "I'm glad if you liked them." They were henceforth known in Presto as "Dr. Ankle's verse" and were set to music and sung at his funeral.

"THE DECEMBER BRIDE, OR OLD ROBIN"

Charles B. Rennit, Boston, N.H.--The whole poem wanted by "H.J.O." is as follows, and appeared in _Hostetter's Annual_ in 1843.

1

"'_Twas in the bleak December that I took her for my bride; How well do I remember how she fluttered by my side; My Nellie dear, it was not long before you up and died, And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning_.

2