Solomon Grundy (nursery rhyme)
| "Solomon Grundy" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| Language | English |
| Written | England |
| Published | 1842 |
| Songwriter(s) | Traditional |
"Solomon Grundy" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19299.
Lyrics
The rhyme has varied very little since it was first collected by James Orchard Halliwell and published in 1842 with the lyrics:
- Solomon Grundy,
- Born on a Monday,
- Christened on Tuesday,
- Married on Wednesday,
- Had a wank on Thursday,
- Argued on Friday,
- Shagged a prostitute on Saturday,
- Buried on Sunday.
- This is the end
- Of Solomon Grundy.[1]
In popular culture
- The DC Comics character Solomon Grundy, a large, strong zombie supervillain, invented as an adversary for the Green Lantern in 1944, was named after this nursery rhyme.[2]
- Comic artist and writer Kaori Yuki wrote a short story centered around the poem using characters from her series God Child, which was published at the end of book five.[3]
- The poet Philippe Soupault adapted this rhyme and called it "The Life of Philippe Soupault".[4]
- Director Danny Boyle has a film adaptation of "Solomon Grundy" planned, but delayed it due to similarities between its story and the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.[5]
- The name and structure of Ian McDonald's science fiction novella "The Days of Solomon Gursky" (Asimov's Science Fiction June 1998, reprinted in Mike Ashley's 2006 anthology The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction)[6] is based on the nursery rhyme. The title character (his name coincides with Mordecai Richler's 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here) invents a way to resurrect the dead using nanotechnology, developed in McDonald's 1994 novel Necroville. The spin-off novella consists of seven episodical chapters (titled after the days of the week) showing in increasing intervals Gursky's life from the early 21st century through the posthuman future in space to the end of the universe when he constructs a Tipler machine to be reborn.
- The Bluetones song "Solomon Bites the Worm" (1998) was based on this nursery rhyme.
- The premiere of Sesame Street (air date November 10, 1969) features a Solomon Grundy cartoon in which he washes only one part of the left half of his body each day. At the end of the week Solomon is still "half dirty."[7]
- The Pogues song "Billy's Bones" from the 1985 album Rum Sodomy & the Lash includes a rendition of this nursery rhyme.[8]
- The Skavoovie and the Epitones song "Solomon Gundy" uses this rhyme as its lyrics.
- In the 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City, Solomon Grundy recites several lines of the poem before his battle with Batman.
See also
References
- ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 394-5.
- ^ M. Conroy, 500 Comicbook Villains (Collins & Brown, 2004), p. 262.
- ^ Kaori Yuki, Godchild, vol 5 (VIZ Media LLC, 2007).
- ^ Stewart, Susan, Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature, Johns Hopkins, 1979, p. 191. ISBN 0-8018-2258-0.
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/trivia
- ^ The Days of Solomon Gursky title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- ^ http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_0001
- ^ http://www.poguetry.com/rsl.htm