You know the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre"?
I've never bothered to find out exactly what the titular Mull might be (I assume it's the name of a place in Ireland or Scotland), but when I was a young child I took it for granted that of course the name Mull of Kintyre referred to -- any guesses?
The Goodyear Blimp.
I don't know how on earth I made that connection -- maybe the syllable tyre made me think of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company? -- but it has proven to be ineradicable. To this day, I cannot listen to that song without imagining the blimp floating serenely over valleys of green and past painted deserts the sun sets on fire.
After taking in Mozart's Magic Flute for the first time, I found myself humming "Mull of Kintyre" to myself, and it took me a second to realize why. The production I had seen had the three Knaben floating around in a sort of airship, which had put me in mind of the lines
Nights when we sang like a heavenly choir
Of the life and the times of the Mull of Kintyre
I have no idea whether such associations are contagious, but if so, you're welcome.
4 comments:
You mean Mullocking Tyre? - that's what he is singing, surely?
But you are right, it's a kind of tyre - which is the correct (i.e. English) spelling of 'tire' (properly meaning fatigue - which is bad for tyres).
My understanding of Scottish vernacular is only partial, but I believe a 'mullocking' tyre is one that is making that rhythmic 'flump-flump' noise, characteristic of driving with a puncture (or a 'flat' as Americans sometimes call it).
As with a Highland garage mechanic saying: "Och aye the noo! Man that's a nasty mullocking tyre you've got there on your wagon, Hamish!"
(Note: Wagon is the correct word for 'truck'.)
Actually, that's the Phoenician spelling -- but they invented the alphabet, so they should know!
Rudyard Kipling wrote, "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday. Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!" -- expressing his dismay at finding he had a mullocking tyre after having just "pomped" it up the day before.
The Phoenicians, of course, took Tyre problems very seriously, as Cartage was central to their economy. I believe they even went so far as to personify Mullock as a god, practicing child sacrifice to appease it.
BTW I find MoK a really cloying and sickly song - except for the bagpipes, and especially about fifteen seconds starting at 3:00.
The highland bagpipes have a small range (just over an octave), and some of their notes are... well, not *exactly* concert pitch; with strange mixed overtones and/or lying (sometimes more, sometimes less) in-between the normally defined notes of the scale.
When pipe bands perform tunes that were not written for the instrument, they nearly always need to adapt the tune, find a place to use the 'off' notes - and that adds a special quality and surprise.
We have some Highland Pipe bands in Northumberland (i.e. England, adjascent to Scotland) - such as this amateur band from Rothbury in Coquetdale, that I have seen many times. Few kinds of music are mores stirring, in context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOlnm_tv_8A
The jig starting at 48 seconds is an example of a very heavily adapted tune, showing-off the strange, wild bagpipe tunings - even without knowing the original tune (and I can't place it) this seems obvious to me.
I like it, but then I make no pretensions to musical sophistication.
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