When I was a little kid, all sorts of music came rushing in, everything from the James Bond and Batman themes to "Winchester Cathedral," Johnny Cash, The Doors and this one by The Irish Rovers, "The Unicorn" (1967) -- adapted from Shel Silverstein's poem of the same name. It's half whimsical and half pitiful. Here's a snippet of the lyric:
Then the ark started movin,' and it drifted with the tide,
and the Unicorns looked up from the rock and cried.
And the water came up and sort of floated them away--
that's why you've never seen a Unicorn to this day.
The Irish Rovers are still roving. Incidentally, they had another hit in 1982 with their version of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."
Today's Rune: Initiation.
7 comments:
Maybe band and lyrics were pitiful, but losing Unicorn was sad and misfortunate. I could name a dozens of species, I would trade for the Unicorn… and guessing your age at that time, it should be tragic to know where the Unicorn ended… under the heavy tide…
Well, Nina, I mean pitiful in the sense of tragic end . . . awful, but enlightening as to the way things go.
Lets not read to much political into this the Irish of Ireland rebellion was well concluded by the time this came out. And i doubt the rovers really cared for much more than breaking through in America at the time,
That's just pretty freaky in a way.
I've heard this song before, or a version of it anyway. I have no clue why thier accents make me giggle so, I think it has something to do with the combination of the instruments.
Haha, thanks for the gumballs, y'all ~~!
I know you lived in the Chicago area as a kid-- do you remember the Ray Rayner show on WGN in the mornings? Rayner would have Lester Fisher, the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo on, with various animals from the zoo, and the section would be introduced with the Irish Rovers song.
I never knew that the Rovers song was based on a Silverstein poem until I came across it in a collection of Silverstein poems ("Where the Sidewalk Ends," maybe?) Both my own kids and my students, when I was a teacher, loved when I read Silverstein's poems to them. You know that Silverstein also wrote Johnny Cash's hit "A Boy Named Sue," as well as Dr. Hook's "Silvia's Mother?"
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