16 - Songs from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

The poems of Alice’s world come alive as song in this musical interpretation of Carroll’s iconic verses. Enchanting and imaginative, these lyrical renditions delight all ages.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is in the public domain, the aged aged man. I'll
tell thee everything I can. There's little to relate. I
saw an aged aged man a sitting on a gate.
Who are you, aged man? I said, and how is
it you live? And his answer trickled through my head

(00:21):
like water through a sieve. He said, I look for
butterflies that sleep among the wheat. I make them into
mutton pies and sell them in the street. I sell
them onto men, he said, who sail on stormy seas.
And that's the way I get my bread. A trifle,
if you please. But I was thinking of a plan

(00:43):
to dye one's whiskers green, and always use so large
a fan that they should not be seen. So, having
no reply to give to what the old man said,
I cried, come tell me how you live, and thumped
him on the head. His accents mild took up the tail.
He said, I go my ways, and when I find

(01:07):
the mountain rill, I set it in a blaze. And
thence they make a stuff they call rollin's ma casse oil.
Yet to pence halfpenny is all they give me for
my toil to feed one's self on batter, And so
go on from day to day, getting a little fatter.

(01:28):
I shook him well from side to side until his
face was blue. Come tell me how you live, I cried.
And what it is you do, he said. I hunt
for hattock's eyes among the heather, bright, and work them
into waistcoat buttons in the silent night. And these I
do not sell for gold or coin of silvery shine,

(01:51):
but for a copper halfpenny, and that will purchase nine.
I sometimes dig for buttered rolls, or set limed twigs
for crabs. I sometimes searched the grassy knolls for wheels
of handsome cabs. And that's the way he gave a
wink by which I get my wealth. And very gladly

(02:13):
will I drink your honor's noble health? I heard him then,
for I had just completed my design to keep the
Mennet Bridge from rust by boiling it in wine. I
thanked him much for telling me the way he got
his wealth, but chiefly for his wish that he might

(02:33):
drink my noble health. And now, if e'er by chance
I put my fingers into glue, or madly squeeze a
right hand foot into a left hand shoe, or if
I drop upon my toe, a very heavy weight. I weep,
for it reminds me so of that old man I

(02:55):
used to know, whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
whose hair was whiter than the snow, whose face was
very like a crow, with eyes like cinders, all aglow,
who seemed distracted with his woe, who rocked his body
to and fro, and muttered mumblingly and low, as if

(03:16):
his mouth were full of dough, who snorted like a
buffalo that summer evening long ago. A sitting on a
gate end of section sixteen, recording by Evan Smith,