Cursing Music

On my recent drive back to Canada, among the many other good things that happened, I had a chance to be reminded why I love Etta James singing Damn Your Eyes so much.

Here, you have a listen, and it should be obvious why that is:

As I was listening to it, I got to thinking that I don’t have a lot of music that’s about hating someone specific. About really cursing out one specific person. Oh, I’ve got lots of music about hating ideas, anger with the world, and even a fair bit about hating people in some category (mostly the British, since the Irish always had better music), but not a lot of music about being really angry with a specific person.

So, as I was driving along I tried to think of what the most bile-laden track was that I have, where the anger is focused on a specific person.

For quite a while I thought it must be Mr. MacManus‘ happy little ditty about the Iron Lady, which you have to admit is pretty good in the hating on a specific person category:

(I note with some amusement that this is a song by an Irish person where the hatred is directed at an English person. I’m just saying.)

That got me thinking about Dylan, but I had to rule out Masters Of War as being about a category, and his specific people hating is weaker than Costello’s.

But, thinking about Dylan got me thinking about folk music.

And then it occurred to me that I had the answer; that amongst the folk music in my collection I had what has to be the all time winner for Best Cursing Out Of A Specific Person.

The song is called Nell Flaherty’s Drake, and is a song by that prolific writer, Anonymous. It’s from nineteenth century Ireland.

The song purports to be the story of a woman named Nell Flaherty who is the victim of a drake-icide, and who spends the song creatively, and at length, cursing out the person unknown who is responsible for the death of her much beloved fowl.

The cursing is extravagant, but safe for the whole family. An example:

May he always be fed on lob-scouse and fish oil,
May he swell with the gout, may his grinders fall out,
May he roar, bawl and shout, with the horrid toothache.
May his temples wear horns, and all his toes corns,
The monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.

Here’s a version of the song, performed by Enoch Kent:

So, I was pretty sure that was the winner.

Until I got home and started to write this up–I went to find a site with the lyrics, so I didn’t have to type the excerpt in, and instead I found this:

‘Nell Flaherty’s Drake’ is an anonymous Irish ballad from the nineteenth century. The drake of the title is believed to be a coded reference to Robert Emmet (1778-1803), who helped to plan and led an uprising against British rule in Dublin in 1803. The uprising went wrong after an explosion at an arms depot, and Emmet was captured and hanged for his part in the uprising and the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice. Nell Flaherty represents Emmet’s fiance, Sarah Curran, (1782-1808). The author curses those (i.e. the British authorities) who killed Nell Flaherty’s drake and urges the readers to keep up the fight. Irish Home Rule was a volatile subject in Britain in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth century, hence the coding in this song.

Now that’s very cool, and makes the song twice as good, but I think it does disqualify it from the running–if we were going to include Irish songs hating on the English, then the list would be very, very long indeed.

So, the question is open: What’s the most angry, bile-laden, cursing-out-a-specific-person song you can think of? Surely someone can beat Elvis’ paen to Maggie.