Go Ahead and forget the lyrics

[lupine52]

Today I was at work and decided that I would listen to 1950s music just to have a tad bit of change in my music repetoire.  On the internet music channel comes the song "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton and so here I am enjoying the refrain which is one the type that you might be humming for days afterwards

Comments

[schnee]

I see your point, but I'm fairly sure that was never supposed to be taken literally!

[lupine52]

Yeah I was actually thinking that myself, I mean it is intended to be seen as an absurd but plausible concept, the song is a folk song meant to be looked at from a jocular perspective.

Basically it is saying ; we want you British gone so bad that we will use whatever means we can to do it , if that means stuffing an aligator in a cannon and using the poor beast as cannon fodder then damnit we will do that too.

So yeah your right, the lyrics are meant to be taken with a lick of salt in much the way a monty python sketch might be done...

[schnee]

Exactly. The whole thing's so absurd that it's clearly only meant as a joke, an extreme exaggeration to underscore the point and give the audience a laugh. :P

[sabotlours]

I always thougt the lyric meant that they used the gator AS a cannon, not shoving the gator in a cannon. If you ARE the cannon, can you be cannon fodder? Hmmm.

[lupine52]

Actually that is a good point, I mean I have seen TV shows where they made cannons out of a wooden tree trunk and iron bondings. When/if the compression of the explosion blows apart the tree trunk cannon do we consider those splinters as "cannon fodder"? I think in that case no because there is an expectation that the wooden cannon will hold up for more than one use, if it happens to fail after the attempt to use it I think it would be quantified as shrapnel rather than fodder.

However in the case of a gator being used to fire off cannon balls the militia man is pretty sure the gator is not surviving for a second use hence it would be fodder.

Like many things in life though I think the word choice is determined from ones perspective.