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| "The Gnu" | |
|---|---|
Writers Flanders and Swann
| |
| SongbyFlanders and Swann | |
| Genre | Novelty song |
| Composer(s) | Donald Swann |
| Lyricist(s) | Michael Flanders |
"The Gnu" (sometimes known as "A Gnu", "I'm a Gnu" or "The Gnu Song") is a humorous song about a talking gnubyFlanders and Swann.
The word gnu is consistently pronounced in the song with two syllables as "g-noo", with the g clearly enunciated, and the n unpalatalised in contrast to the traditional "noo" or "nyoo". The song also plays on silent letters in other words such as "k-now" and "w-ho", and adds initial g's to various words beginning with n.
Michael Flanders introduces the piece with a humorous monologue explaining how he came to write it. He tells the story of a car – "great big flashy thing, with teeth; engine at both ends" – that is the bane of his existence, since it constantly occupies the one spot in the road outside his house where he can comfortably get from wheelchair to car and vice versa. The licence number, he explains, is 346 GNU, although registration marks using "GNU" in reverse format were not actually issued until 1958[1] indicating a degree of poetic license being used in this tale. The song itself then begins, and consists of a brief piano introduction and two similar sung verses, each preceded by a verse spoken by Flanders. Donald Swann accompanies Flanders on the piano, but neither speaks nor sings during the song.
In the first verse, the singer is at the zoo when he meets a man who claims to know all the animals (like the habits of baboons and the number of quills on a porcupine), but misidentifies a gnu as a "helk"; the animal corrects him, further affirming that he is neither a camel or a kangaroo. In the second verse, he has taken furnished lodgings, and wakes up in the night to see a stuffed hunting trophy above his bed; he is trying to decide whether the animal's head could be a bison, an okapi or a hartebeest, when he seems to hear a voice, asserting indignantly that it is a "g-nu, a-g-nother g-nu" and threatening to sue for its misidentification.
Flanders and Swann first performed and recorded this song in their revue At the Drop of a Hat. It was released as a single on the Parlophone label in 1957 under the title "A Gnu", and produced by future Beatles producer George Martin.
The jocular mispronunciation of "g-noo" in the song has led, through familiarity, to this becoming a widespread pronunciation of the word "gnu" in English.[2][3]
Richard Stallman mentions "The Gnu" in connection with the naming of the GNU project in a 2002 interview.[4]
