Lyr Req: butter making songs

Subject: butter making songs
From: GUEST,kathmandoobiedoo
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 04:33 AM

Does anyone know any butter making songs? Here in the himalayas 'making butter' is analagous to having some with with your sweetheart...I think it would be fun to sing some with the local Irish band.

Thanks

Willow

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Margaret V
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 11:19 AM

That's an interesting question, kathmandoobiedoo. Historically it seems that in some Western cultures dairy maids and laundresses were associated with sexual promiscuity. There are plenty of English songs in which a man approaches a woman who is going "a-milking" and engages her in hopeful dialogue... I was told (but please understand this is unsubstantiated by me) that the song "Spotted Cow" uses the cow as a metaphor for virginity... but I can't think of any songs just now that use butter-making as a metaphor. Anyone who has made butter (and I have, many times, as a demonstration at the museum where I work) knows the obvious parallels to intercourse, so I can understand the connection. Would you be willing to post a few (translated) lyrics to give us a sense of how the Nepalese songs use the concept? Oh wait, I just noticed you never said there were songs per se... anyway, one little rhyme that's been passed along (again, I don't know the source or the age, so I apologize for vagueness) to recite to the rhythm of churning is "Come, butter, come; come, butter, come; Johnny's at the garden gate, waiting for his butter cake; come, butter, come." Cheers, Margaret

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From:
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 04:17 PM

I'll have to look. There is a Gaelic song for Butter Churning. I've got it somewhere.

Most cultures would have had work songs which include items like Butter Churning.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 06:47 PM

On a Folk Club visit to Acton Burnell farm museum in Shropshire I asked this question and they knew of them but were not mucsicians so would have had to do research. The rhythm and length of the song was designed to time the process. A butter making shanty if you wish.

I am intrigued to see if some examples appear here.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From:
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 07:17 PM

OK! Found a friend's site which has the words, so I don't have to re-type it.

Thig A Chuinneag Thig

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Margaret V
Date: 06 Mar 01 - 09:58 PM

Cool! Thanks, George. Margaret

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: LR Mole
Date: 07 Mar 01 - 03:43 PM

Isn't there an old rock song called "Butter by You, Butter than Me?"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Jul 02 - 07:50 PM

Copied from http://www.geocities.com/an_cruinne/ThigaChuinneagThig.html

THIG A' CHUINNEAG, THIG

CHO: Blàthach gu dorn, ìm gu uillinn,
Thig, a' chuinneag, thig.
Blàthach gu dorn, ìm gu uillinn,
Thig, a' chuinneag, thig.

1. Tha glug a seo, tha glag a seo,
Tha glag a seo, tha glug a seo;
Tha rud a's fhèarr no coir a seo,
Tha rud a 's fhèarr na fìon ann.
Thig, a' chuinneag, thig.

2. Thig an smeor', thig an lòn,
Thig an ceò as a' bhruth;
Thig 'a chuthag, thig a' cheathag,
Thig an osgag athair.
Thig, a' chuinneag, thig.

COME, BUTTERCHURN, COME

CHO: Buttermilk to the wrist, butter to the elbow;
Come, butterchurn, come.
Buttermilk to the wrist, butter to the elbow;
Come, butterchurn, come.

1. There's a glug here, there's a glack here;
There's a glack here, there's a glug here,
There's something better here than you'd expect,
There's something better than wine here.
Come, butterchurn, come.

2. The thrush will come, the blackbird will come,
The mist will come from the hill,
The cuckoo will come, the jackdaw will come,
The father osprey will come.
Come, butterchurn, come.

[The chorus means that the singer wishes to have a large amount of butter and only a little buttermilk.]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: masato sakurai
Date: 03 Jul 02 - 09:21 PM

"Thig, a chuinneag, thig" is on World Library of Folk and Primitive Music -- V. 3: Scotland (Rounder).

~Masato

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 03 Jul 02 - 10:01 PM

.....or, of course, dairy say, "To everything, churn, churn, churn / There is a reason, churn, churn, churn...... There must be heaps of udder ones out there....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: ciarili
Date: 03 Jul 02 - 11:36 PM

What an udderly cool thread!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 04 Jul 02 - 05:39 AM

This site has one, plus lots of interesting food lore:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6707/foodlore.html

You could also email the Irish Traditional Music Archive (if that clicky didn't work, the address is http://www.itma.ie) and see what they have stashed away on their shelves.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 04 Jul 02 - 10:17 AM

Mr Red: It's Acton Scott in Shropshire.

xx

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 04 Jul 02 - 05:24 PM

And of course there's

Churn around
Every day I get a little bit lonely
Churn around....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Dead Horse
Date: 04 Jul 02 - 06:53 PM

With my voice, almost anything I churn out is liable to make your milk curdle!
P.S. Is there a Kurdish national anthem?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 04 Jul 02 - 07:51 PM

You-all ought to know that churning clabber-milk to make butter has been done in every part of the world, not just in Ireland, England, Scotland, in the past. For an Appalachian story and churning song/chant, see SINGING FAMILY OF THE CUMBERLANDS, Ch. 2 at about pages 22-24 (may be different page numbers in the revised edition). And there are no double-entendre meanings here- it's about actual churning of actual butter. Although there's ecstacy aplenty when the hot cornpone comes out of the woodstove oven, and Mom sets that big bowl of freshchurned butter(washed and whipped in cold water, then drained and salted to taste) in the middle of the table. Buttermilk or cold sweetmilk to drink...

Sorry to talk about my own scribblings, but it's still fresh on my mind, after more than seventy years, that day when a sassy little five-year-old girl (me) was doing meannesses, for attention, during the supper-getting and was punished by having to sit on Mom's lap and learn to churn, with her had over mine on the dasher, learning the art of it (when to churn fast, when slow, when to add cold or hot drops of water), listening to all the churning rhymes she spoke, and sang, to make the time pass while the butter gathered. And an occasional secret hug to take the sting out of the punishment.

And someone here was right (thread above)- when the song was over, the butter was done!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jul 02 - 05:07 PM

An old ditty from the Ireland, Churn Churn the Buttermilk thick, for I want none of your watery milk.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: butter making songs
From: Genie
Date: 07 Jul 02 - 02:27 AM

Probably not what you're looking for, but I know of two different songs about the two frogs who fell into a bucket of milk. One takes a woe-is-me attitude and promptly drowns. The other keeps swimming for all he's worth, not willing to give up. His swimming eventually churns the milk into butter, and he is able to climb out.

Genie