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Poetry:

"Owl and the Pussycat"


by: Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey,
and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh! let us be married;
too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.


 
 
Wikipedia: the Owl and the Pussycat
Edward Lear's illustration of the Owl and the Pussycat
Enlarge
Edward Lear's illustration of the Owl and the Pussycat

"The Owl and the Pussycat" is a famous nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1871. Its most notable historical feature is the coinage of the term runcible spoon. It features four anthropomorphised animals (the owl, the pussycat, the 'piggy-wig' and a turkey) and revolves around the love between the title characters, who are married by the Turkey in the final stanza (of three).

Portions of an unfinished sequel, "The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat," were first published posthumously in 1938.

The title characters famously go to sea in "a beautiful pea-green boat". The phrase "pea-green" occurs several times in Lear's writings (including his surviving diaries). He clearly had some fondness either for the sound of this phrase, or for this particular shade of green, or perhaps both.

Adaptations

The story has been set to music and animated many times, including by Igor Stravinsky and by Laurie Anderson.

  • A version was composed by Elton Hayes in 1948 and was recorded in 1953 by Parlophone. It became a regular item on Children's Favourites.
  • It was the central focus for a 1968 children's musical play about Lear's nonsense poems, entitled "The Owl and the Pussycat went to see". The play was written by Sheila Ruskin and David Wood.
  • The title was borrowed for an unrelated stage play and subsequent 1970 movie starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal.
  • In 1971, a cartoon based on the poem was made by Weston Woods.
  • In the 1977 Disney cartoon The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the character Owl mentions a relative of his who supposedly "went to sea in a pea-green boat" with a Pussycat.
  • In 2001, Stewart Lee performed Pea Green Boat, a stand-up show which revolved around the deconstruction of the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat and a tale of his own broken toilet. It ran for a week at the end of 2001 at the Battersea Arts Centre as a workshop performance, for a week in its finished form at The Traverse in Edinburgh (during the Edinburgh Fringe festival) in the summer of 2002, and for three weekends in Jan/Feb 2003 again at the Battersea Arts Centre. Amongst other topics, Lee speculates as to whether the love between the Owl and the Pussycat was a metaphor for Lear's love of another man.
  • Igor Stravinsky set it to music in 1966. A recording of the work was made under the supervision of the composer and is available on Sony's 'Stravinsky Edition'.

References

External links


 
 

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