Times is Hard
Times is Hard
Original Text
Anthony Hopkins, Songs from the Front & Rear: Canadian Servicemen's Songs of the Second World War (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1979): 157. M 1679.18.S6 Robarts Library.
Notes
1] a World War II song popular with the troops (for the music, see Hopkins).
shit-house: out-house, common on Canadian residential properties before the popular indoor flush toilet. Back to Line
shit-house: out-house, common on Canadian residential properties before the popular indoor flush toilet. Back to Line
2] Anthony Hopkins notes: "... a parody of the evil landlord evicting a poor honest woman, foreclosing on the mortgage while twirling his mustache ends and leering at the daughter" (157). Back to Line
3] Father's away: off to war as a sailor, and so not in a good position to pay. Back to Line
4] in the family way: pregnant, in too delicate a condition to appease the family's creditors. Back to Line
5] gonorrhea: a highly contagious sexually transmitted disease, evident on the genital mucous membrane: this affects the brother's ability to support the family.
Note the internal rhyme on "dear" and "gonorrhea." Back to Line
Note the internal rhyme on "dear" and "gonorrhea." Back to Line
6] fucking hard: really very hard ...a reference to the difficulties being experienced by the sister and the brother in earning a living? Back to Line
7] Repeating the first line, increasing the pathos of the speaker's appeal, and emphasized by one more metrical foot. Back to Line
8] in the yard: a North Americanism ... the British would say "the garden." Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1939
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme