With Cat-Like Tread Pirates Police: Pirates: Come friends, who plough the sea Samuel: Your silent matches Police: Pirates Come friends, who plough the sea With cat like tread With Cat-Like Tread Song LyricsPirates With Cat-Like Tread Upon our prey we steal In silence dread Our cautious way we feel No sound at all We never speak a word A fly's foot-fall Would be distinctly heard Police: Tarantara, Tarantara. Pirates: So stealthily the pirate creeps While all the household soundly sleeps Come friends, who plough the sea Truce to navigation Take another station Let's vary piracy With a little burglary Samuel: Here's your crowbar And your centre bit Your life preserver You may want to hit Your silent matches Your dark lantern seize Take your file And your skeletonic keys Police: Tarantara, Pirates: With Cat like tread Police: Tarantara Pirates: In silence dread Pirates With Cat-Like Tread Upon our prey we steal In silence dread Our cautious way we feel No sound at all We never speak a word A fly's foot-fall Would be distinctly heard Come friends, who plough the sea Truce to navigation Take another station Let's vary piracy With a little burglary With cat like tread Upon our prey we steal In silence dread Our cautious way we feel With cat-like tread, -- So stealthily the pirate creeps, Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here is an American popular song first published in 1917. The lyrics, written by D. A. Esrom (pseudonym of Theodora Morse) to a tune composed by Arthur Sullivan for the 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance,[1] are:
The melody was originally part of "With Cat-Like Tread" in Act II of Pirates and echoes the Anvil Chorus from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore;[2][3] W. S. Gilbert’s original lyrics set by Sullivan to the tune are:
It appears that the lyric "Hail, hail, the gang's all here" had unofficially been added to Sullivan's melody many years before 1917. It was referenced in American newspapers as a familiar song as early as 1898, sung at political and other gatherings.[4][5] A Philadelphia Inquirer news item from April 1, 1898, for example, stated that during a raucous meeting, members of the Philadelphia Common Council loudly sang, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here, what the h--- do we care! What the h--- do we care!"[6][7] Likewise, a Delaware state legislature session in March 1901 was disrupted when Democratic members loudly sang the song.[8][9] The title line of the song is also quoted in the closing measures of the 1915 song "Alabama Jubilee".[10] Also in 1915, the Ohio State University fight song Across the Field incorporated the title phrase as the penultimate lyric.[11] The song is referred to in Kurt Vonnegut's book, Slaughterhouse-Five: "The door was flung open from inside. Light leaped out through the door, escaped from prison at 186,000 miles per second. Out marched fifty middle-aged Englishmen. They were singing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here" from the Pirates of Penzance."[12] By the 1950s, the chorus of the song (with revised lyrics) had become popular in Irish and Scottish communities as being part of "The Celtic Song", sung by the fans of Glasgow Celtic in Scotland and later other teams. Glen Daly recorded an "official version" of "The Celtic Song" that is commonly played at Celtic Park prior to matches.[13] External resources[edit]
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