This is a collection of comic narrative poems and song lyrics by W. H. Gilbert, best known as the librettist who partnered with Arthur Sullivan. The volume gathers the “Bab Ballads” — verses he wrote and illustrated for a magazine — alongside the “Savoy Songs” drawn from the operas, and it appeared in an American edition from the Philadelphia publisher Henry Altemus. The poems are short, rhyming, and deliberately absurd, mixing doggerel rhythms with a deadpan delivery that lets their grimmest jokes land without a flinch.
“The law is the true embodiment
Of everything that’s excellent.”
The Story
The Yarn of the ‘Nancy Bell’
The book opens with a narrator walking the shores between Deal and Ramsgate, where he encounters an elderly naval man with weedy hair and a long beard. This mariner recites, in a strange minor key, a list of identities: he is at once the cook, the captain bold, the mate of the Nancy brig, the bo’sun tight, the midshipmite, and the crew of the captain’s gig. The narrator, supposing the man has been drinking, asks how this can be. The sailor then tells his painful story. The good ship Nancy Bell sailed to the Indian sea and struck a reef; of seventy-seven souls, only ten survived. After a month without food or drink, the survivors drew lots and shot the captain for a meal. Next the mate fell, then the bo’sun, then the crew of the captain’s gig, until only the cook and the narrator remained. The cook argued that he could not be cooked, since he could and would cook the narrator instead. He prepared water, salt, pepper, chopped shalot, sage, and parsley, and invited the narrator to see how nice he would smell. The narrator upended him, smothered him in the boiling broth, and ate him within a week. As he finished the last chops, a vessel came in sight. Ever after, he never laughs or smiles, but sits and croaks his single joke.
Captain Reece
Captain Reece, R.N., commands The Mantelpiece, and his crew adores him. He pampers them with feather beds, slippers, hot-water cans, brown windsor, valets, seltzogenes, cream ices, currant wine, ginger pops, a zoetrope, and volumes from Mudie’s library, along with The Times and the Saturday Review. One summer evening he asks what he can do for his men. Coxswain William Lee suggests the captain marry off his daughter, ten female cousins, niece, mother, six sisters, and aunts to the unmarried crew, asking for the captain’s own daughter himself. Reece agrees, though his daughter is promised to an earl and his family to peers. He resolves to settle thousands on the crew and remain the only bachelor aboard. The boatswain then suggests his widowed mother for the captain. Reece meets her, agrees, and all are married the next week at the church on the hill.
The Bishop and the Busman
A bold Bishop of London rides daily on a Putney bus driven by a Jewish man named Hash Baz Ben, also called Jedediah, Solomon, and Zabulon. The Bishop cries out the man’s names and mocks his beard, his nose, and his refusal of pork, hoping to Christianize him. After seven years the Hebrew child is riled to tears and confronts the Bishop, who promises to stop annoying him if he becomes a Christian. The Jew agrees. The organ between his eyebrows falls away, replaced by a Christian nose; his Hebrew beard becomes fair whiskers; his name becomes Adolphus Brown. Within a year he weds the prelate’s daughter Jane.
The Folly of Brown
A clownish boor inherits two hundred thousand pounds but remains uneducated. The narrator, a promoter, forms companies to help him invest, offering shares at par, a furnished second floor, fashion advice, a country seat, a trotting horse, an old Master, and wines. Brown refuses everything, calls the narrator a thief, and thrusts him from the door. The narrator concludes that Brown is a fool.
The Three Kings of Chickeraboo
Three men — Pacifico, Bang-Bang, and Popchop — plan to become kings by extemporizing islands from three casks. Rear-Admiral Bailey Pip, commanding a seventy-something-gun ship, spots the three islands and kings, lowers his gig, and obtains their signatures on a printed Alliance form in Queen Victoria’s name. He returns home, is made Baron de Pippe of Pippetonneville, and receives a coat of arms with three islands vert on a field of blue and the motto “Chickeraboo.” Ambassadors, attaches, and a bishop on spec sail for Chickeraboo; the poet hopes no war will ever be declared with it.
The Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo
Bishop Peter is appointed to the balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo, whose twenty-three people play the tum-tum and live on scalps served in rum. Peter does the same to humor them. He sails to London, and on the Borough Road sees a dancing man. He asks to learn the dance to please his tribe. The dancer teaches him daily steps.
Lenore
Lenore is a Saracen maiden, brunette and statuesque, the reverse of grotesque. Her father is a bagman at Aden; her mother performed in burlesque and led the ballet at the Royal, while Lenore performed at the Saracen’s Head. Majestic in face and figure, she dazzled the cits and ecstaticized the pits; her troubles were only domestic but drove her half out of her wits. Her father incessantly lashed her, fed her grudgingly on water and bread, and whenever he thrashed her, her mother sat down on her head. Guy saw and loved her, purchased a stall for the season, and sat in it nightly. His views being proper, he wanted to wed, so he called at her shed and saw her progenitor whop her and her mother sit on her head. He calls the father a brute, an unprincipled cad, a turbaned old Turk and malignant, declares his adoration of Lenore and his indignation, and objects to a fond father using a knout to bang her about. The bagman replies, “Crusader, get out!” Guy asks whether a warrior laden with a big spiky knob should stand idly and sob while a beautiful Saracen maiden is whipped by a Saracen snob. He resolves to go to London from his charmer, does so with his loot (seven hats and a flute), and is nabbed for his Sydenham armor at Mr. Ben-Samuel’s suit. Sir Guy is lodged in the Compter; her pa dies in a rage; his daughter marries the prompter, grows bulky, and quits the stage.
King Borria Bungalee Boo
Borria Bungalee Boo is a man-eating African swell whose sigh is a hullaballoo and whisper a horrible yell. Four male subjects doubled the knee to him; they were once on a far larger scale, but he had eaten the balance. They are haughty Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah, lumbering Doodle-Dum-Deh, despairing Alack-a-Dey-Ah, and good little Tootle-Tum-Teh. One day the crew grieves for lack of meat, and Borria, dying for something to eat, demands a meal. He tells Alack-a-Dey he is famished and asks Tootle-Tum-Teh where to look for a meal, threatening that if he does not get one they shall have to eat Tootle-Tum. Tootle-Tum asks for a moment and names Tippy-Wippity Tol-the-Rol-Loo, queen of a neighboring state, who would pickle deliciously cold, and her four pretty Amazons, enticing and not very old: neat little Titty-Fol-Leh, rollicking Tral-the-Ral-Lah, jocular Waggety-Weh, and musical Doh-Reh-Mi-Fah, the nightingale. Borria’s forces march in a terrible row; the ladies fighting for Queen Loo prepare to meet the dreadful insatiate foe. They sharpen no weapons and poison no arrows, but prepare to conquer or fall another way: with crimson and pearly-white dye they make themselves fair, encircle each eye with black, and paint their hair yellow. The forces meet in the field; Borria’s men order the Amazonians to yield immediately and draw their arrows to the head. But Waggety-Weh ogles Doodle-Dum-Deh; Titty-Fol-Leh tells Tootle-Tum to go along, calling him a naughty old dear; Tral-the-Ral-Lah taps Alack-a-Dey-Ah with her fan; and Doh-Reh-Mi-Fah tells Pish to go away, calling him a bad man and a delightful young man. The Amazons simper, sigh, ogle, giggle, flush, open their eyes wide, chuckle, flirt, and blush. Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah asks Alack-a-Dey what this means; Alack-a-Dey says they think them uncommonly green. Even Doodle-Dum-Deh is insensible to their leers, and Tootle-Tum-Teh says it is their blood the men desire and they have come for their dinners. The Queen of the Amazons falls to Borria Bungalee Boo, who gulps her in a mouthful with a yell. Titty-Fol-Leh is eaten by Pish-Pooh-Bah, Waggety-Weh by Alack-a-Deh-Ah, Tral-the-Ral-Lah by Doodle-Dum-Deh, and Doh-Reh-Mi-Fah by Tootle-Tum-Teh.
The Troubadour
A troubadour plays without a castle wall; within, a hapless maid responds to his call, lamenting “Oh, willow, woe is me!” and wishing she were free to hie far away. Unknown her face and name, he knows her wailing comes from a dungeon cell, where a hapless woman lies; that fact was enough for him. He vows not to sit, lie, eat, or drink till she is free as he or he as pent as she. Her tears cease, her wails no longer sound.
Alice
Alice sits at her window when a beautiful young gentleman passes; she thinks she could be happy with such a gentleman. Every morning he passes her house at a quarter unto ten; he is a sorter in the Custom-house, and the Custom-house is fifteen minutes’ walk from her abode. Being pious, Alice fears it is unwise to look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes, so she seeks the village priest to whom her family confesses. She tells him she is the most unhappy of sinners. The padre asks what she has done. She confesses: helping mamma steal a kiddy from its dad, assisting dear papa in cutting up a little lad, planning a burglary, forging a check, and slaying a baby for the coral on its neck. The pastor sighs, drops a tear, says it is wrong to murder babies to fleece corals, but such sins expiate at half-a-crown apiece. Calling her young and flighty, he calculates five crimes at half-a-crown = twelve-and-six. Alice weeps at his cheap kindness, then admits another crime: she has winked at a pleasant-looking gentleman with pretty purple eyes who passes daily, and he has winked at her. Father Paul declares this the most distressing news; her excellent papa has pledged her hand to a promising young robber, lieutenant of his band. He notes her parents are his most remunerative customers, keeping starvation from his doors, and that if she marries anyone respectable she will reform, ruining Father Paul. He draws his cowl and hastens to tell Robber Brown. Robber Brown muffles his anger, resolves to nab the sorter, terrify him into fits, and have his gentle wife chop him into little bits. He reasons that a girl may love a living gent, but disgust will fall upon her senses when she looks upon his body chopped particularly small. He traces the sorter to a still suburban square, seizes him unaware, hits him on the head with a life-preserver, and Mrs. Brown dissects him before bed. Alice grows more settled, never again guilty of such weakness, until Robber Brown bestows her hand on the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
Ben Allah Achmet; or, The Fatal Tum
The narrator knew a Turkish man named Effendi Khan Backsheesh Pasha Ben Allah Achmet, met upon a two-pair-back; also a Doctor Brown, whose bounty the narrator often ate. The Turk and Brown lived at Hooe in Sussex. A nice young lady, Isabella Sherson, wore another’s hair. The Turk adored the maid of Hooe though his harem would have shocked her; Brown, a most seductive doctor, adored her too. They followed her everywhere; she knew neither by sight and cared for neither a copper. Brown did not know the Turk, who might have been his sainted mother; the people in this tale are total strangers to each other. The Turk sickened sore, threw himself on the floor, rolled on his carpet, moaned and groaned, with pain in his little tummy. A Doctor came, rang, felt his pulse, looked up his tongue, hummed and hawed, and asked where the pain was. The Turk giggled, blushed, and said he did not like to say. Doctor Brown urged him to be explicit. The Turk shyly bit his thumb, blushed coyly, and admitted the pain was in his little tum. Brown prescribed medicine, said his blood flowed sluggish, told him to get rid of fat and wear medicated flannel, and to send for him when in need, naming himself Brown and claiming to have saved his life. The invalid shrieked “My rival!” drew a mighty sword, yelled “This to thy weazand, Christian pest!” and drove it through the Doctor’s chest. The blow was decisive; Doctor Brown grew deadly pasty, saying “Now see the mischief that you’ve done,—You Turks are so extremely hasty.” He explained there are two Doctor Browns in Hooe—he’s short and stout, the other tall and wizen; the Turk ran the wrong one through. Apologies were heard; the Turk said he was pained at his mistake. Brown said the Turk shall be interred with him, a Mausoleum grand awaits; the Turk said “Oh, pray don’t say another word, I’m sure that more than compensates me.” Asked if full inside, the Turk said there’s room for any number. They laid down and died, sleeping their slumber in proud Stamboul.
Songs of a Savoyard
“The Englishman” celebrates that he is an Englishman, for he himself has said it, greatly to his credit; he might have been a Roosian, French, Turk, Proosian, or perhaps Itali-an, but in spite of temptations to belong to other nations he remains an Englishman. “The Disagreeable Man” declares himself a genuine philanthropist (all other kinds sham)
The Sentry’s Brain and the Two Parties
A sentry pacing his beat through the long night, fighting monotony by setting his mind to work, announces himself as an intellectual chap whose thoughts run to astonishing places. What strikes him as funniest is the trick Nature plays on every child born into the world: each one arrives already sorted, a little Liberal or else a little Conservative. The joke sharpens when he turns to the House of Commons, where members filing through the division lobbies must check their brains at the door and vote exactly as their leaders instruct. The thought of statesmen actually thinking for themselves is more than any man could contemplate with a steady nerve. So the refrain returns, half mocking and half resigned: Nature, in her wisdom, makes every person either Liberal or Conservative.
Sorry Her Lot and the Judge’s Rise
A lyric follows on the sorrow of loving too well and hoping in vain, where sighs betray the spell that eyes have spoken, and grief bows the head whenever Love still lives while Hope has died. The hour of sunset is sad, and night lies dark over Earth’s daughters when the weary one flies to the ark from the empty waste of waters.
Then a judge takes the stage and recounts his climb. Called to the Bar with a fresh appetite and no money, he owned a blue swallow-tail coat, a brief bought off a booby, shirts and collars, and a ring like a ruby. He danced through Westminster Hall like a semi-despondent fury, convinced he would never address a British jury. Weary of third-class journeys and bread-and-water dinners, he courted the elderly, ugly daughter of a rich attorney, who promised him reward at the Bailey and the Middlesex Sessions and assured him the lady might pass for forty-three in the dusk with a light behind her. Briefs came trooping, his voice rang out at the Sessions and the Old Bailey, and thieves and burglars came to rely on his orations. Rich as the Gurneys at last, he found his wife an incubus and threw her over; the attorney tried to blacken his character, and now he stands ready to try a Breach of Promise of Marriage.
True Diffidence and the Highly Respectable Gondolier
Of all afflictions, the worst is a diffident nature. A man may be as clever as a Crichton of early romance, but unless he blows his own trumpet he has no chance at all. The speaker offers himself as proof: a bright intellectual brain, the wittiest in London, a highly intelligent face, and yet he fails because he is modesty personified. As a poet he is tender and quaint, full of passion and grace, and Ovid, Horace, Swinburne, and Morris all take a back place beside him; he sings, plays, and paints better than anyone—but he is diffident, modest, and shy.
A gondolier’s tale follows, told by a speaker who stole a prince, brought him away, and left him prattling with a highly respectable gondolier who promised to rear the royal babe and teach him the trade of a timoneer alongside his own bratling. Both babies were strong, stout, and clever, beyond any doubt. After a year the speaker came seeking the infant and found the gondolier stretched a corpse on his bier: a taste for drink combined with gout had doubled him up forever. Because of his tippling, the man never could declare which child was his own and which the royal stripling. The two boys duly followed his old career as gondoliers, and one of them—which one is not clear—is the royal prince whom the listener married. No tale, the speaker concludes, is so free from doubt.
Don’t Forget and the Darned Mounseer
A wife addresses her “Marco dear” as he sets off, instructing him to be good while away, not too gay, blind to maiden grace, never glancing at womankind. If he is wise he will shut his eyes until they are together again and speak to no lady under forty-five. He should frown on every gown and never forget that he has married her. She asks him to lay his head down at sunset, sing to no one, sit and mope, and shed a tear for her sake; if he thinks of her, he should tell the moon, which will read it in rays on the lagoon, tell the wind how he fares, and send word by little birds. Whatever else he forgets, the refrain insists, he must not forget he is married to her.
Then a sailor’s yarn: shipped in a Revenue sloop off Cape Finistere, the speaker’s crew sighted a merchantman, a Frenchman going free, and made for the bold Mounseer. She proved to be a frigate, ran up her ports, and fired a thirty-two that came uncommon near, but the crew answered with a cheer that paralyzed the Parley-voo. The Captain told them there was nothing to fear, that they could take her if they liked, for she was only a darned Mounseer. Fighting a French fal-lal, the speaker reflects, is like hitting a girl—a lubberly business—for they were sturdy British salts and she was but a Parley-voo. They put up the helm and scudded before the breeze, giving a compassionating cheer, and the Froggee answered with a shout as they went about, which was grateful of the poor Mounseer. The speaker wagers the two sides kissed each other’s cheeks, as foreigners do, and blessed their lucky stars that British tars had pity on a poor Parley-voo.
The Humane Mikado
No more humane Mikado ever existed in Japan. He is reckoned a true philanthropist, second to nobody, and his humane endeavor is to turn each evil liver into a running river of harmless merriment. His object is sublime: to let the punishment fit the crime and make each prisoner represent a source—the great principle by which his justice is measured out.
The Bride’s Lament and a Merry Madrigal
A lyric follows in which the speaker declares her heart would be one heart with her beloved’s, and happiness would dwell in that shrine, were she his bride. All day long their lives would be a song, with no grief or wrong to make her heart rebel. The silvery flute and the melancholy lute are as a night owl’s hoot beside her low-whispered coo; the skylark’s trill would be shrill discord against the soft thrill of her wooing. The rose’s sigh would be like a carrion’s cry beside the lullaby she would sing, and a feather’s press would be leaden heaviness beside her caress. The refrain closes unhappily: she is not his bride.
“A Merry Madrigal” greets the brightly dawning wedding day as a joyous hour and begs the fleeting, fickle moment to stay. What though mortal joys be hollow and pleasures come only if sorrows follow; though the tocsin sound ere long, ding dong, still, until shadows fall over one and over all, sing a merry madrigal—fal la. Dry the ready tear; though hours are creeping, there is little need for woeful weeping till sad sundown is near. All must sip the cup of sorrow—the speaker today and the other tomorrow; this is the close of every song, ding dong. Though solemn shadows fall sooner or later over all, sing a merry madrigal—fal la.
The Love-Sick Boy and the Publisher’s List
When he first knew his old, old love, the speaker’s bosom welled with joy; he threw his riches at her feet and was a love-sick boy. No terms seemed too extravagant to employ upon her; he used to mope, sigh, and pant just like a love-sick boy. But joy incessant palls the sense, and love unchanged will cloy; she became an intense bore to her love-sick boy. His flame burnt with a fitful glimmer, he grew cold and coy, and at last, one morning, he became another’s love-sick boy.
The volume closes with the publisher’s advertising for Henry Altemus’ Publications of Philadelphia, listing titles such as Stephen: A Soldier of the Cross, Paul: A Herald of the Cross, Vic: The Autobiography of a Fox Terrier, Woman’s Work in the Home, The Apocryphal Books of the New Testament, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Fairest of the Fair, A Lover in Homespun, Annie Besant: An Autobiography, The Grammar of Palmistry, Around the World in Eighty Minutes, What Women Should Know, The Care of Children, Preparation for Motherhood, the Altemus Conversation Dictionaries, Taine’s English Literature, and Shakespeare’s complete works. There follow Doré’s masterpieces, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Dickens’ Child’s History of England, Bible Pictures and Stories, My Odd Little Folk, Paul and Virginia, and Robinson Crusoe, then the Altemus Illustrated Library of Standard Authors, the Young Peoples’ Library, the Devotional Series, the Eternal Life Series, the Belles-Lettres Series, and the New Illustrated Vademecum Series, which includes Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs by W. H. Gilbert.
Characters
The cast is enormous and almost entirely made of types rather than people, which is part of the joke. A single poem can introduce a captain, a crew, a bishop, a bus driver, and a whole island of Amazons, and none of them will be heard from again. What holds them together is a shared comic logic: they are all a little too literal, a little too agreeable, or a little too hungry.
Certain figures recur as recognizable Gilbert stock. There is the benevolent commander who cannot stop indulging his men — Captain Reece of The Mantelpiece, who furnishes his crew with feather beds, cream ices, and volumes from Mudie’s library, then marries off his entire female acquaintance to them at their request. There is the officious cleric, whether the bold Bishop of London who hectors a Jewish busman for seven years until the man converts and marries his daughter, or Bishop Peter of Rum-ti-Foo, who learns a London dance step so he can entertain his twenty-three parishioners. There is the professional man undone by his own cleverness: the Judge who rises from impecunious barrister to wealth by courting a rich attorney’s ugly daughter, then throws her over and finds himself facing a breach-of-promise suit; the disagreeable philanthropist who corrects everyone’s faults and cannot understand why nobody likes him.
Women in these poems tend to be either prizes, meals, or both. Lenore, the Saracen maiden, is thrashed by her bagman father while her mother sits on her head, and is eventually married off to a prompter. The Amazons of Tippy-Wippity Tol-the-Rol-Loo paint their faces and flirt with an invading army, and are eaten one by one for their trouble. Alice, who confesses to a string of crimes at half-a-crown apiece, is pledged to a promising young robber and ends up married to him. The cannibals, the kings, the sentries, the gondoliers — all of them are less characters than premises, set in motion so the verse can watch them collide.
Themes
The governing subject is appetite — for food, for status, for a good marriage, for someone else’s job — and the way polite society dresses it up. The Nancy Bell survivor eats his shipmates and never smiles again, but the poem’s real target is the cheerful recitation of horror as a party turn. King Borria Bungalee Boo devours a neighboring queen and her four Amazons in a mouthful, and the poem reports it with the same even tone it uses for their cosmetics. Cannibalism here is not shocking; it is administrative.
A second thread is the comedy of institutions. Parliament, the law, the Church, the Admiralty, and the marriage market all run on the same principle: everyone does what they are told, and no one thinks. The sentry on night duty concludes that Nature arranges for every person born to be either a little Liberal or a little Conservative. The Lord Chancellor hands out pretty young Wards in Chancery all day — one for him, one for you, one for thee — but never one for himself. The humane Mikado’s project is to let the punishment fit the crime, which sounds enlightened until you notice it is still punishment.
Underneath the farce runs a persistent fatalism, voiced most plainly in The Tangled Skein: life is a pudding full of plums, the riddle is one we shrink from giving up, and the sensible response is to take it as it comes. The poems rarely punish vice or reward virtue. They simply observe that the modest man fails, the diffident genius goes unheard, the love-sick boy recovers and falls for someone else, and the price of shoddy goes up once everyone is somebody.
Why It Endures
These verses survive because they are funny in a way that has not dated much, and because they are the workshop where Gilbert’s later stage craft was built. The topsy-turvy logic, the patter rhythms, the respectable surface over the anarchic content — all of it is here in embryo, and readers who know the operas will recognize the machinery immediately. The Nancy Bell alone has kept its grip: a poem that begins as a shaggy-dog anecdote and ends with a man boiling his shipmate in broth, told in a minor key, is not something you forget.
The book also preserves a particular Victorian comic register that is hard to find elsewhere in such concentration — the straight face, the tidy rhyme, the cheerful atrocity. It is not satire with a program, and it is not nonsense for its own sake. It is the sound of a clever man enjoying his own cleverness, and inviting the reader to enjoy it too.
