Talk:Abdul Abulbul Amir

message: I find the sentence that this is "folk song written by Percy French and later set to music" to be very confusing.  Are folk songs written by people?  Are songs written then later set to music?  I'm too lazy to research this history but I wish someone would.
: I guess a song becomes a "Folk Song" when nobody remembers who wrote it, or the author is long dead, the copyright (if any) expired, and nobody cares. This poem used to be widely anthologized under the author's name back in the days when people actually read books.--Saxophobia 20:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It does sound like a contradiction in terms, but there are other cases where a folk song began life as a poem and was later adapted to either a musical air that already existed or was in the appropriate style: Percy French's own "Gortnamona", "Down By The Sally Gardens" by William Butler Yeats, and Jerusalem -- words by William Blake, 1804, music by Hubert Parry, 1916. Another example is where new words were custom-fitted to an existing melody, like The Red Flag by Jim Connell for the tune of "The White Cockade" (and later the much drearier "Tannenbaum"), or "On Raglan Road", by Patrick Kavanagh, for the air "The Dawning of the Day". Of course, if you try that and you're not a Connell or a Kavanagh, you might just end up with filk. Ben-w 05:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  As to what makes a "folk" song a "folk" song, I would offer the following.  It's not that the author is necessarily unknown, though he/she might be.  Certainly Stephen Foster or Henry Clay Work's compositions would now be considered "folk songs"--or Woodie Guthrie's--and we know who all those composers were. IMO, it's a question to whether the pieces were widely performed by amateur musicians, and got into very, very wide circulation that way.  On the other question asked above--it can be that one person writes words, perhaps not even intended to be a song, and another sets them to music.  Or else--as attested by all the two-person writing teams like Rodgers and Hart, Gilbert and Sullivan, etc., one specializes in lyrics, another in melodies.  It can also happen, as it did with "Listen to the Mockingbird," that one person writes a melody and later another person puts words to it.  Creativity happens in many unscripted ways.  Terry J. Carter (talk) 03:57, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Folk song?

message: If you go to the Eisenhower Farm at Gettysburg Pa. as the guide takes you through his main living room the guide will tell you that this was loved by the General.
He played it on the piano, and sung it with much gusto but very little quality at family gatherings.
Maybe it stems from a marching song during his West Point days. He did not make it to WW1.72.228.50.136 13:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eisenhower's favorite song 

message: This is an automated message regarding an image used on this page. The image :File:Abdulcartoon.jpg, found on :Abdul Abulbul Amir, has been nominated for deletion because it does not meet Wikipedia image policy. Please see the image description page for more details. If this message was sent in error (that is, the image is not up for deletion, or was left on the wrong talk page), please contact this bot's operator.  STBotI (talk) 15:08, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: An image on this page may be deleted

message: Need to fix the following line: "It tells the story of two valiant heroes — a Russian and one of the Shah's mamelukes"    Given the geographical reference to the Danube and the poem's reference to 'the Sultan,' it's not likely any Shah was associated with the poem.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.180.79.243 (talk) 00:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Though the Sultan also affected the title Padishah (king of kings) which, you might argue, was a kind of shah. Francis Davey (talk) 19:26, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tighten up the introduction 

message: I have a copy of "The Scottish Student's Song Book" dated 1897 in which this appears under the title "Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer", and with words similar, but not identical, to those given here. No author is given for the words, but there is an acknowledgement "By special permission of Mr. John Blockley, 16 Mortimer Street, London W." The tune is attributed to "Ali Baba".
In view of the date, this must be a more credible version of Percy French's original than Frank Crumit's is. I'm inclined to make a corresponding move and edits at some point in time, but if anyone has any better information, please give it here. SamuelTheGhost (talk)
:Brendan O'Dowda the Irish Folksinger, interviewed the daughters of Percy French and researched the original song in 1981. He also claimed to have gotten a bregrudging acknowledgement from the publishers that Percy was the actual author. The lyrics in O'Dowda's 'The World of Percy French' differs from what he identifies as 'the pirated version' in several respects. Abdullah Bulbul Ameer is the spelling for the Turk, and Ivan Potschinski Skidar is the spelling for the Russian.
Phonetically the Turks name translates to Abdul Serving Allah as the Nightengale Prince. Skivdas is sometimes identified as rude British slang for chambermaid, so it may well be that French deliberately created a spoof of comic opera.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.233.198.46 (talk) 07:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: In the 1928 sequel to Beau Geste, the novelist has a femme fatale whistle a tune (which the narrator identified as 'that popular aire') then she sings a verse to tease the French Legionairre she calls 'Major Ivan.' She uses the words 'Ivan Potschjinski Skivah.' So again in 1928 (this is before Crummit) the lyrics were closer to French's original than the words known to WWII veterans, which due to vaudville and radio, were likely Crummit's version. 76.233.198.239 (talk) 20:03, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doubts about title and text 

message: "He could imitate Irving, play euchre or pool,
And perform on the Spanish guitar ...."
Now I have to try to find the source, don't I?
Terry J. Carter (talk) 03:44, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variant Lines 

message: by which I mean each text line in the box contains four lines of the conventional song lyrics layout. 
Mind you, I agree it's less tiresome than scrolling a long way down the page; but does anybody else find, as I do, that it conveys less of the feeling of the rhythm and rhymes than when set out like the preceding talk section here ("Similar Version")? I am just asking Iph (talk) 15:21, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the quatrain lineation? 

message: Someone appears to have edited the lyrics without correcting the citation. I'm looking at the source cited right now, and the title and lyrics do not match those given. I'm thinking that, in addition to correcting the source for the lyrics as given, the page may need editing to add multiple versions. Source of evidence for error here.Infinityseed (talk) 03:22, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lyrics and Citation Do Not Match 

message: The version I first heard (& cannot fully remember) is obviously a total parody, is very rude & crude yet quite funny in the main. I get the impression that it was probably the work of more than one person, probably in the army. One of the milder verses is as follows:
Where's Daniel cried the king
He is in the lions den replied the courtiers
What does he there asked the king
Why Daniel looks at the lions & the lions look at Daniel replied the courtiers.
Daniel was in the courtyard
having a camel-shit fight with the pageboys
Daniel come forth cried the king
but Daniel slipping on a greasy turd came fifth.
There is much of this sort of irrelevant(?) preamble before actual contact between Abdul & Ivan.
I think that this version should also be recorded but I'm not sure where.
Does anyone out there know the full version?
101.164.99.156 (talk) 11:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  A variant 

message: There is nothing in the lyrics to suggest that Abdul is a mameluke, or for that matter that he fights for the Sultan. His employer is in fact referred to as the "Shah", implying Persian, not the Ottoman Empire.
:Well but
:#It was written during a Russian-Turkish war (granted the Russians also fought the Persians at various times IIRC)
:#The person's name is "Abdul Abulbul Amir", and his weapon is a "skibouk"
:#Granted it says "in the ranks of the Shah", but later it says "The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly". I wouldn't read too much into either one... it's a song not a historical essay
:#Abdul Abulbul Amir's tomb is by the Danube, Turkish territory far from Persia. Herostratus (talk) 20:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sultan's mamelukes? 

message: The section on the cartoon states that one of the reporters was Lou Costello.  However, their first movie One Night in the Tropics was just coming out when the cartoon was being made and before that, Abbot and Costello were mostly famous from radio.  A friend of mine thinks it was supposed to be Curly Howard, but has no source.  I'm not going to tag the article at this time, but if anybody can clear this up properly it would be appreciated.  JDZeff (talk) 22:37, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reporters 

message: Do we really need to include the homophobic "explicit" lyrics in their entirety, especially without so much as a comment as to the problematic content? Loopus (talk) 02:01, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homophobia