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POPULAR SONGS RE-SUNG;

OR, MISS BOWDLER AT THE MUSIC HALLS.

INTRODUCTORY.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,

In these progressive days earnest reformers, especially those of the London County Council type, yearn to chasten and aestheticise the Muse of the Music Hall, who is perhaps the only really popular Muse of the period.  My name gives me a sort of hereditary right to take exceptional interest in such matters, though indeed my respected, and respectable, ancestor is not in all things the model of his more catholic and cosmopolitan descendant.  The McDougall regimen would doubtless be a little too drastic.  To improve the Music-hall Song off the face of the earth, is an attempt which could only suggest itself to puritan fanaticism in its most arbitrary administrative form.  The proletariat will not “willingly let die” the only Muse whose ministrations really “come home to its business and its bosom.”  No, Sir, the People’s Pegasus cannot, must not be ruthlessly consigned to the knackers.  But may it not be gently bitted, discreetly bridled, and taught to trot or amble with park-hack paces in the harness of Respectability?

It is in this hope and faith that the following drawing-room versions of
some of “the most popular Comic (and Sentimental) Songs of the Day” have
been attempted by
    Your respectful admirer,
        VIRGINIA BOWDLER.

To the Respectable Citizen, the Moral Matron, and the Young Person, with a love of larkiness and lilt, but a distrust of politics, pugilism, and deep potations, the following eclectic adaptation of this prodigiously popular ballad may perhaps be not altogether unwelcome.

No.  I.—­TWO LOVELY BROWN EYES,

AIR—­“Two Lovely Black Eyes”.

Strolling one Sunday near Bethnal Green,
This “aesthete” you might have seen,
Surveying “the People” with scornful spleen
When, oh, what a surprise! 
An Art Exhibition I chanced to see,
Therein I entered right speed-i-lee,
When—­on a canvas—­there shone on me
Two lovely brown eyes!

Chorus.

Two lovely brown eyes! 
Oh, what a surprise! 
Smiling right down on a dingy throng,
Two lovely brown eyes!

From a canvas of “High Art” sort they shone,
Their owner was cinctured with classic zone,
She was spare of flesh, she was big in bone,
Oh, what a surprise! 
A parson, whom everyone owned “a good sort,”
Had hung them there for the pleasure and sport
Of the dreary dwellers in slum and court,
Those lovely brown eyes!

Chorus.

Two lovely brown eyes! 
Oh, what a surprise! 
Drawing the gaze of an East-End crowd,
Two lovely brown eyes!

My own regard, as I loitered there,
Fastened on one proletariat pair,
With finery frowsy, and oily hair;
Oh, what a surprise! 
“SALLIE” and “BILL” were the names they flung
Frankly abroad with unreticent tongue,
Lounging and staring where graciously hung
Those lovely brown eyes.