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robert shackleton - introduction: a history of new york lyrics

[irving, spoken]
i’m washington irving, and the cycle of years has come round to 1809. which means that i’m twenty+six years old and have as yet written nothing. that is, nothing worthy to endure.

what about that history of old dutch new york i thought of writing, my knickerbocker history? if it’s funny enough it will be read. if it’s good enough it will last. and of course, it needn’t stick too closely to the dull facts of history. a fantasy, a fancy, not an ounce of credibility. for who’s around to say that i’m making it all up? that’s it!

(sung)
i’ll sing of an age forgot
in the history of new york
when the site of trinity parsonage
was a pasturage for pork
when wall street was indeed a wall
and the bowery was a farm
and the pipe you smoked, if you smoked at all
was twice as long as your arm

(spoken)
yes sir, this is a good idea. six hundred people in new york at that time, in 1647. and by now, now in 1809, we’re almost as big as boston.

(sung)
i’ll sing of an age forgot
before the inflation came
when manhattan island
brought a sum embarrassing to name
of the days before the indian tribes
had turned to reservations
before a wigwam suggested bribes
or had other unsavory political connotations
(spoken)
nope, i better cut that out. no politics. question of, of where to begin.

i begin to see it. yes, i think i begin to see it. the battery, new york’s harbor, about 1647. stone piers along the waterfront and windmills in the distance. a ship or two at anchor behind the rows of houses with their corrugated roofs. a fort with its cannon thrusting out, and here, a gallows for the miscreant. and there some benches, and in a pile, some bowling b+lls. those early dutchmen had strange ideas about what was sport.

[trumpet fanfare.]

[corlear, spoken]
oyez! oyez! can the city of new amsterdam hear me? no news by land… no news by sea… absolutely no news whatsoever.

- robert shackleton lyrics

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