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The description as printed on the album cover is a little misleading, asStanley Holloway reads Gilbert and Joyce Grenfell reads Belloc. There is alsosome confusion about the title: the Belloc contribution is described as"Cautionary Tales" on the front of the sleeve and on the spine, but as "CautionaryVerses" on the back.

Chris Webster pointed out that Stanley Holloway is now probably best remembered as Alfred Doolittle inMy Fair Lady, but hedid play Pooh-Bah in theGroucho MarxMikado.The label is the 'Caedmon Literary Series,' and one assumes that theyspecialised in records of books / plays / poems,etc. The 45rpmissue apparently includes only theBab Ballads, not the CautionaryVerses.

Contents are as follows:

The back of the album cover of the 45rpm issue (the front side of whichis pictured below) has the following description:

This is a record for people, even children, who love morsels ofmurder and mayhem, and are not at all dismayed by some of the reallypeculiar things that can happen to people. It is an establishedfact that in spite of (or because of?) such goings-on, generationshave grown up loving the Bab Ballads. As for us, we think it is apity to waste such sophisticated verses on the very young, andrecommend them whole-heartedly to their elders as well.

Review by Lisa Berglund

Caedmon TCE 145

I can't imagine a better pairing, or quartet, of two of England's greatestcomic actors with two of England's greatest comic poets. Any child (oradult) lucky enough to possess a copy of this recording will inevitablyplay it often enough recite from memory every poem, complete with aslavish imitation of each of Grenfell's upper-class hoots and Holloway'sorotund growls.

The selection of Bab Ballads is an excellent introduction to Gilbert'scomic poetry. One "Song of a Savoyard" appears, "The Ape and the Lady"from Princess Ida; as a formal satire of Darwinian theory it works wellout of the context of the opera. The other six selections are fairlyrepresentative of the major themes of the Ballads; satires of French andEnglish provincialism ("Babette's Love"), popular fads and familiarcharacter types ("Phrenology," "Peter the Wag") and absurd people inabsurd situations, replete with comic violence ("Ben Allah Achmet," "TheSensation Captain"). Even Gilbert's favorite dream of a South Sea idyllmakes a brief appearance. Every poem receives a beautifully nuancedtreatment from Holloway, who adopts different voices and accents for thevarious characters without ever swamping Gilbert's humor with his owncomic genius.

The collection does not include any ballads on theatre and pantomime. Admittedly, those poems are often less funny and more strongly satiricalthan Gilbert's other ballads, and in the context of a record intendedprincipally for children the omission makes sense. A few of my favoritepoems are missing—I wish Holloway had recorded "Etiquette," "Ferdinandoand Elvira," "Eheu Fugaces" and "Lost Mr. Blake." Conspicuous by theirabsence are the ballads often known to casual fans of Gilbert andSullivan, the poems that Gilbert adapted for the Savoy operas, such as"The Bumboat Woman's Story," "Captain Reece," "Jo Golightly," and "TheFairy Curate."

Of course, the gem of the collection is "The Yarn of theNancy Bell," Gilbert's brilliant parody (homage? imitation?) of Coleridge's "The Rimeof the Ancient Mariner." Holloway supplies a plaintive little tune forrefrain of the "painful yarn" that the old sailor tells the narrator, andI'm sure it's exactly what Gilbert had in mind.

Clearly Belloc learned a lot from Gilbert, and his poems provide just asmuch pleasure, albeit of a simpler, more acerbic sort. Bad little boysand girls are devoured by lions, tossed by mad bulls, roasted andexploded, disowned or disinherited. Rather like Gilbert's topsy-turvyworld, the universe of the Cautionary Verses presents Victorian moralitycarried to a savagely hilarious but logical conclusion. After runaway Jimis eaten by a lion,

His mother, as she dried her eyes,
Said, well, it gives me no surprise;
He would not do as he was told.
His father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James's miserable end,
And always keep a hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

Grenfell's endearinglystarchy reading of these poems will ensure that fanatical fans of Gilbertwill enjoy the "B" side just as well.