george@minster.UUCP (george) (12/01/85)
(sorry if this is out of context/too old to be of interest)
Although Green Grow the Rushes Oh may or may not be the origins
of gringo, it is a common vehicle as a tune for other "marching songs"
or rallying cries.
the left groups in Britain at least have a variant which goes:
I'll Give you one-oh
Red flies the banner high
what is your one-oh
One is workers unity and ever more shall be so.
the extensions covering
two two the workers hands (striving for his daily bread)
three three the rights of man
four for the four great thinkers (marx/engels/lenin/{stalin, trotsky}
etc etc
because of the splintered nature of the left in britain there are also
various stalinist/trotskist variants, the anti-trot version having
N for the holes in Trotskys head
where N is some large number referring to the ice-pick incident.
The pro-Stalinists have references to the Moscow Dynamo football team and
to the Kremlin bells.
I am sure that other causes, left, right, ecological have done and will
continue to use traditional folk songs with good martial tempo as vehicles
for their cause, as rallying cries, or as marching songs. -The content of
the original is almost redundant, except where some humour is to be had
from subtle (well, maybe not so subtle) changes of meaning. -After all
look at all the rude versions of "mary had a little lamb".
The original idea though, a name coming from a song is a nice one. Are there
any other examples waiting out there?
George Michaelson, York University