Belgium

Holding on

Way back in November 2007 the article entitled, 'What shall we do?', sub-title, 'Goodbye Belgium' was posted. In it the predicament of Belgium was explained in so far as, at the posting date, Belgium had been without a government for 170 days and the saga looked due to run and run. And it did. Good job the article was not finished with the well worn phrase, "Don't hold your breath", for full article see HERE.

An unstoppable force ?

What shall we do with the drunken sailor? is the opening line of perhaps the most well known sea shanty of all. What shall we do with an unwanted country? is not a long-lost verse of this shanty recently found by a ferreting musicologist-cum-folksong fanatic, but is my question to you; and the country in question is Belgium. These things have a sort of connection, in so far as the music for the shanty was written down in 1825, the Belgian Revolution establishing that country, using bits of Holland and France, was in 1830, and the words for the shanty were first heard in 1891. Some of us are dreamers, and so it could just be that, to keep their spirits up during the revolution, someone did hum the music.Then again, by the mid 1890s perhaps the whole song was popular in the coastal taverns of Belgium - could be.