In Which I Rhyme "FitzRoy" With "hoi polloi"

...or, “$100 buys a lot of cucumber rolls”.

For the Biology Department Christmas party last night, myself and my friends Jeremiah and Jackie wrote and performed a song, and won first place in the skit competition along with $100 worth of sushi at Sho-Dan. Hooray! We tried to keep the details of the project top secret leading up to the party, with good success.

What we ended up writing was a bit of an adventure song, chronicling the famous Voyage of the Beagle, sung to the tune of “The Legionnaire’s Lament” by The Decemberists. Here are the lyrics, with a bunch of links for people who aren’t Biology geeks:

VERSE 1
I'm a clergyman, my name is Charles Darwin, hope my nose looks determined, for this voyage at sea
Sailing with Captain FitzRoy, ‘Round the world with the hoi polloi, trying to employ, Lyell’s Geology
And I’m writing down, all the new things that I have found, I pray we don’t run aground, so far from our homes
It’s been five years, so far, better check our chronometers, double-check using shining stars, as we sail through the night

CHORUS
We’re sailing on the Beagle now, the Falklands lie off our prow, Patagonias gone, Galapagos ahead
From Plymouth’s shores, sit back and hear the ocean roar, collecting fossil bones, finches, and new friends
And I don’t know if we’ll ever be back again, La Da Dum Dum La Da Da Dum

VERSE 2
Bleached bones lying in the sun, Megatherium and Glyptodon, eighteen pence buys a Toxodon, to send back to my home.
“One might really fancy, from an original paucity”, from one species to a multiplicity, these finches and their beaks
Watching this tortoise cook, maybe I’ll write a book, on this gobbledygook, that mystery of mysteries

REPEAT CHORUS

INTERLUDE (With a slide show)

REPEAT CHORUS (GO TO OUTRO)

OUTRO
And don't know if we'll ever be back again,
be back again, be back again, O be back again.
Oh oh oh oh oh, la la la la, la la la la, oh oh oh oh

As well as being to the tune of a Decemberists song, the lyrics are very much written in the style of The Decemberists: as many ridiculous rhymes, and as much archaic language as possible. My favourite moment in writing the lyrics was realizing that a famous passage from “The Voyage of the Beagle” actually matched the rhyme scheme of the song. Here’s the full quote:

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.

Keep in mind that this was written before the publication of “The Origin of Species”. Anyways, we had a lot of fun putting this together, and it seemed people really enjoyed our performance as well. I’ve currently got a pretty good cold, so I wasn’t able to sing at all, but Jeremiah and Jackie were awesome. I’ve been told that video exists of our performance, but for now here’s a picture of the three of us: