Billy Bunter
Sunday 27th October 2024 6:41pm [Edited]
The Sussex Coast
4,660 posts
The song If Ever I cease to Love was written, composed and sung by the great Music Hall comic George Leybourne (subject of the film Champagne Charlie starring Tommy Trinder & Stanley Holloway - see my post on page 4 of this thread) in 1871 and, interestingly, subsequently became adopted for the "King of the Carnival" ("Rex") at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, where it still plays every year.
Amused by its nonsensical lyrics (see below), the American actress Lydia Thompson included the song in her operetta Bluebeard in her 1872 tour of the USA. Rumours abounded of an affair between Thompson and Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia, fourth son of Tsar Alexander II, who was touring the East and the Mid-West of the USA at the time.
It was around this time, a "School of Design" was formed in New Orleans to add an organised daytime parade on Mardi Gras Day to complement the established night time parade and ball, which had been held for over a decade since its founding in 1856. Well aware of the Thompson and Alexandrovich rumours, the School of Design invited the Grand Duke to their newly established parade and selected If Ever I Cease to Love as the royal anthem to be played for the daytime parade's appointed monarch, Rex, a position which is now considered to be one of the highest honours in the City of New Orleans, and it has been performed for Rex at every Mardis Gras since then - as can be heard here from the 1989 parade:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B96K8qd4QR4&list=RDB96K8qd4QR4&start_radio=1
In a house, in a square, in a quadrant,
In a street, in a lane, in a road
Turn to the left, on the right hand
You see there my true love's abode
I go there a courting and cooing
To my love, like a dove
And swearing on my bended knee
If I ever cease to love
May sheep heads grow on apple trees.
If I ever cease to love
If I ever cease to love
May the moon be turned into green cheese
If I ever cease to love.
She can sing, she can play the piano
She can jump, she can dance, she can run
In fact she's a modern Taglioni
And Sims Reeves rolled into one
And who would not love such a beauty
Like an angel dropped from above
May I be stung to death with flies
If I ever cease to love
May I be stung to death with flies
If I ever cease to love.
If I ever cease to love
If I ever cease to love
May little dogs wag their tails in front
If I ever cease to love.
For all the money that's in the bank
For the title of a Lord or a Duke
I wouldn't exchange the girl I love
There's bliss in every look
To see her dance the Polka
I could faint with radiant love
May the Monument a hornpipe dance
If I ever cease to love
May we never have to pay the Income Tax
If I ever cease to love.
If I ever cease to love
If I ever cease to love
May we all turn into cats and dogs
If I ever cease to love.
May all the seas turn into ink
May Negroes all turn white
May the Queen in Buckingham Palace live
May wrong be turned to right
May cows lay eggs, may fowl yield milk
May the hawk become a dove
May bobbies refuse to eat cold meat
If I ever cease to love
May I be frozen to death with heat
If I ever cease to love.
If I ever cease to love
If I ever cease to love
May a sane man adore his mother-in-law
If I ever cease to love.