Annotation:Life's a Pun

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LIFE'S A PUN. English, Air (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. "Life's a Pun" is a song by Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) for his opera Private Theatricals, or Nature in Nubibus (1791), produced in the Polygraphic Rooms.

It begins:

'Life's a jest,' says the poet; arrah! sure 'tis a pun--
Men call black for white through some quibbling pretence,
And expressions still use where the sound is all one.
Tho as distant as London from Dublin the sense.
Then let 'em now just go their gig and their fun,--
This life, by my soul, 's nothing more than a pun,
Where men play on our passions to turn us all fools,
And make puns and quibbles, that we may make bulls.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 4), 1796; No. 195, p. 73.

Recorded sources: