Richard Melson

September 2006

Yhe World Turned Upside Down

http://www.gourd.com/110A.HTML

http://www.contemplator.com/england/worldtur.html

The fundamental anxiety of the Zionist neo-conservatives such as Richard Perle, David Frum, Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, is that the world could undergo a 're-stratification" process with Jews somehow supplanted by Muslims and a Third World development agenda.

This would replace the current world of "Judeocentrism" and "Zionomics" where all events and processes in the world are to be seen through Jewish and Israeli eyes and everything else is defined as evil.

You might call this potential new world a post-Zionist world. The reason that the neo-cons are always in a tremendously urgent state of violent hysteria is precisely that this nightmare of a post-Zionist globalization haunts their dreams.

This post-Zionism would be a  kind of "the world turned upside down" scenario as captured by the famous tune of the same name.

Tradition has it that when Cornwallis surrendered at

Yorktown (1781) the British played this tune.

There is some debate as to whether that is myth or fact.

The ballad was first published on a broadside in 1643 to be sung to the tune When the King Enjoys His Own Again. It was a protest against the ending of all the favorite English Christmas traditions which he feels were destroyed by Cromwell's victory at the Battle of Naseby (1645) (see link to blackletter ballads for lyrics from 1646). In America the tune was also known as Derry Down and The Old Women Taught Wisdom.

"If ponies rode men and grass ate the cows"

The World Turned Upside Down:


If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
If the mamas sold their babies
To the gypsies for half a crown;
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.

Version 2

Goody Bull and her daughter together fell out,
Both squabbled and wrangled and made a great rout.
But the cause of the quarrel remains to be told,
Then lend both your ears and a tale I'll unfold.
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
Then lend both your ears and a tale I'll unfold.

The old lady, it seems, took a freak in her head,
That her daughter, grown woman, might earn her own bread,
Self-applauding her scheme, she was ready to dance,
But we're often too sanguine in what we advance.
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
But we're often too sanguine in what we advance.

For mark the event, thus for fortune we're cross,
Nor should people reckon without their good host,
The daughter was sulky and wouldn't come to,
And pray what in this case could the old woman do?
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
And pray what in this case could the old woman do?

Zounds, neighbor, quoth pitt, what the devil's the matter?
A man cannot rest in his home for your clatter
Alas, cries the daughter, Here's dainty fine work,
The old woman grows harder than Jew or than Turk
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
The old woman grows harder than Jew or than Turk.

She be damned, says the farmer, and do her he goes
First roars in her ears, then tweaks her old nose,
Hello Goody, what ails you? Wake woman, I say,
I am come to make peace in this desperate fray.
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
I am come to make peace in this desperate fray.

Alas, cries the old woman, And must I comply?
I'd rather submit than the hussy should die.
Pooh, prithee, be quiet, be friends and agree,
You must surely be right if you're guided by me,
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
You must surely be right if you're guided by me.

Related Links

1st Version From Burl Ives Songbook
Second Version from:
Colonial and Revolution Songbook
See Bibliography for full information.

The World Trade Upside Down:

Re-Stratification Anxiety

September 4, 2006