GILBERT AND SULLIVAN PATTER SONGS

On a lighter note, the hugely comical poems/lyrics of W.S. Gilbert make me smile.  I will share two of their "patter songs".  The first is from the operetta "The Sorcerer" (1877).  Not only is it highly comical (well I think so!) but I recall my good friend Andrea can recite the whole piece at full throttle!  "Simmery axe" is St. Mary's Axe, an area of London, where the Gherkin now stands.

Oh, my name is John Wellington Wells
I'm a dealer in magic and spells
In blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses
In prophecies, witches, and knells
If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"
If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax
You've but to look in on our resident Djinn
Number seventy, Simmery Axe

We've a first-class assortment of magic
And for raising a posthumous shade
With effects that are comic or tragic
There's no cheaper house in the trade

Love-philtre, we've quantities of it
And for knowledge if any one burns
We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet
Who brings us unbounded returns
For he can prophesy with a wink of his eye
Peep with security into futurity
Sum up your history, clear up a mystery
Humor proclivity for a nativity
He has answers oracular, bogies spectacular
Tetrapods tragical, mirrors so magical
Facts astronomical, solemn or comical
And, if you want it, he
Makes a reduction on taking a quantity
Oh, if any one anything lacks
He'll find it all ready in stacks
If he'll only look in on the resident Djinn
Number seventy, Simmery Axe

He can raise you hosts of ghosts
And that without reflectors
And creepy things with wings
And gaunt and grisly spectres
He can fill you crowds of shrouds
And horrify you vastly
He can rack your brains with chains
And gibberings grim and ghastly
Then, if you plan it, he changes organity
With an urbanity full of Satanity
Vexing humanity with an inanity
Fatal to vanity
Driving your foes to the verge of insanity
But in tautology on demonology
'Lectro biology, mystic nosology
Spirit philology, high class astrology
Such is his knowledge, he
Isn't the man to require an apology

Oh, my name is John Wellington Wells
I'm a dealer in magic and spells
In blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses
In prophecies, witches, and knells
If any one anything lacks
He'll find it all ready in stacks
If he'll only look in on the resident Djinn
Number seventy, Simmery Axe

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