Hur man spelar munspel när lungorna blir för trötta
Av Toots Thielemans själv!
It has often occured to me how illogical some children’s songs and stories are (other things too for that matter).
The heroine in the book The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett has noticed just that. She says something like: “The stories don’t want you to think, just believe.”
But who said anything about logic then…?
Today I’d like to share a Swedish children’s song with you where such an illogical statement appears. The title would literally translate to the squirrel sat in the spruce (Sw: ekorr’n satt i granen).
The lyrics would look somewhat like this:
1 The squirrel sat in the spruce
2 about to peal cones.
3 then he heard the children
4 and got in a big hurry
5 jumped he from the pine's branch
6 he hit his little leg
7 and the long, hairy tail
Now this song can be clearly broken down into phases as follows.
Phase 1 (setting): lines 1 and 2, explains the setting.
Phase 2 (surprise): lines 3 and 4.
Phase 3 (action): line 5.
Phase 4 (consequence): lines 6 and 7, where the consequence of line 5 is explained.
Now, from phase 1 we know that the squirrel is sitting in a spruce, and from phase 2 we know that it is a male squirrel. In phase 3 something very interesting happens: our squirrel jumps from a pine, while sitting in a spruce!
Some sing the song as “jumped he to the pine’s branch”, but from what I know the version I presented is the original, written by Alice Tegnér.
Is this a supernatural squirrel who teleported to a pine after pealing the cones? Or is phase 3 taking place at a future time (very unlikely)? No.
I would rather say that when this song was written, a spruce and a pine tree were the same thing!
[Sarcasm off]
