Dancing Femme
Our little Alice has discerning taste in music. She’s been enjoying the Violent Femmes’ fifth album, Why Do Bird Sing? A lot. Everytime she hears it, she rocks to the beat and dances.
Here’s a Quicktime movie of Alice dancing to the Violent Femmes. The song she’s dancing to is Hey Nonny Nonny, which is great song using as its lyrics (believe it or not) a 16th Century poem by the Shepherd Tonie entitled Colin. What’s a nonny, you might ask? I think Edmund Blackadder (as played by Rowan Atkinson) said it best in one of the episodes of Blackadder:
… and don’t say “tush”, either! It’s only a short step from “tush”
to “hey nonny nonny”; and then, I’m afraid, I’ll shall have to call
the police.
Shakespeare also used the expression “hey nonny nonny” in his poem “Sigh No More, Ladies” which appears in the play Much Ado About Nothing. For what it’s worth, the OED also notes that “nonny-nonny” is a meaningless refrain of obscure origin and was “formerly often used to cover indelicate allusions”.
But more exciting then Alice dancing, the video also includes a few seconds of Alice standing unsupported. Can walking be far behind?
You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed). But be warned, this is a long one.