How lovely are your dwelling-places?

[Guest]

Does anyone else have any other ideas for pieces of music that have vague, ahem, innuendo in?

[David Underdown]

Several of the duets for Adam and Eve in The Creation, more than one psalm, and as for the Song of Songs...

[DracoM]

Beat me to it, DU!!

I remember once sitting quietly and abstractedly in choir stall one evenong during first lesson, and watching the Head Chorister and his mate opposite staring fixedly at the psalter and nudging each other. At no point for the rest of the service could they keep a straight face, and in fact at one point in the Nunc had to sit down and cover their faces in handkerchiefs to smother the hysterical laughter and feign coughing fits. When asked afterwards what the problem was they were firstly incoherent with mirth for many minutes until one of them snatched up a psalter and opened the psalms at Ps 106 v 38. Que? Don't ask me .....all I did was observe and marvel.

Mind you, 12 yr olds can have some of the most 'inventive' minds in the biz, even in church! 'Moab is my wash-pot'? No trouble there you'd think, until your choristers' house matron is called Maureen, nickname 'Mo'. Cue slow collapse of decani.

[Chris Newman]

"Come ye sons, o fart"

"All wee like sheep" or the Welsh version "All we like sheep"

[ardcarp]

psalms at Ps 106 v 38.

I'm sure kids must be much more sophisticated these days. I'm sure that at 12 or 13 I wouldn't have inferred anything from that...not even sure I knew what a whore was! However, quite recently an adult choir completely cracked up and was incapable of any further rehearsal. It was all because of the last line of Eric Whitacre's Water Night

[Miles Coverdale]

In my namesake's time, to go a-whoring had nothing to do with consorting with ladies of the night, but rather meant to worship false idols.

The psalms certainly have a few euphemisms in - he smote his enemies in the hinder parts is one that springs to mind.

[Anna]

Lucie Skeaping and her Band have done a lot of bawdy songs. Like Lavender Blue, which is, evidently, about gay sex.

[Vile Consort]

Ps 147 v10 has always struck me as rather Julian and Sandy: "neither delighteth he in any man's legs".

[ardcarp]

and I always feel a bit sorry for the lady in Psalm 30 who takes a while to get going...

[Miles Coverdale]

Ps 147 v10 has always struck me as rather Julian and Sandy: "neither delighteth he in any man's legs".

That reminds me of a rather nice (mis)translation by George Joye, who clearly misread the Latin tibia (legs) as tubae, giving:

He delighteth not in strength and strong steeds, neither hath he pleasure in the trumpets of men.

[ardcarp]

Unsophisticated though I and my fellow choristers were at 12 ish, we nevertheless used to invent extra bits of anatomy and their failure to function along the lines of 'noses have they and smell not'. I stiul find it funny, but I do have a puerile SOH (as Mrs A is always telling me).

[mangerton]

One from Psalm 91, which we're singing on Sunday "With long life will I satisfy him".

[bull-scheidt]

The "purple headed mountain" in All Things Bright and Beautiful?

[Miles Coverdale]

Unsophisticated though I and my fellow choristers were at 12 ish, we nevertheless used to invent extra bits of anatomy and their failure to function along the lines of 'noses have they and smell not'. I stiul find it funny, but I do have a puerile SOH (as Mrs A is always telling me).

I remember doing much the same with that Alan Gray piece What are these that glow from afar - Strong as a lion, deaf as a post etc, although I may have been a little older than 12.

[bull-scheidt]

Exactly how much older, Miles?