Parody of “Sule Skerrie”, words and music
traditional
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Parody lyrics ©2009-02-08 by Bob Kanefsky. All rights reserved. The copyright of the original lyrics and music remain with the holder(s) of the original copyright.
I thought of this mashup of Ookla the Mok’s “Arthur Curry” and Child Ballad #113 while sitting in a filk room at Marcon in 1998 or ‘99. Rand and Adam were in the room, and someone sang the Child Ballad. (It turned out she was setting up a parody called “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, You Seal.”) I wrote this shortly thereafter, but for a decade I assumed there would be no audience familiar with both songs. I tried it at Conflikt 2 in 2009 and found out that’s no longer true, so I polished it up and here it is. (Shortly afterward, I wrote the reverse mash-up.)
A woman walked along the strand
— And a wondrous woman she was indeed —
Saying, “What am I but a surrogate mother
For a superhero’s fishy seed?”
A fair-haired man stepped from the foam
— And clad in orange scales was he —
And said, “Here am I, thy baby’s father.
I’ve paid thy bill by EFT.”
“I may be nothing on the land,
But I’m a king beneath the sea.
By night, when singing in the band,
My name is Arthur Curry.”