Baby Butterfly (A mournful tale)

1936. We had a lot of butterflies in the garden of Fairfax Avenue. 

Cabbage white butterflies they were, with caterpillars of a bright dark green. 

The caterpillars were all over the front garden. 

They were an object of fascination to me and the twins, my friends Mavis and Sheila. 

We used to study them, thinking of them and taking care of them, christening them with names popular in our families, when we realised they were the babies of the butterflies.

To our horror, we were heartbroken when we found that Leonard had been stepped upon by a human foot, spreading the whole of his bright green body all over the crazy paving.

It was decided that a funeral must take place.

Leonard was scraped off the ground and placed delicately in a matchbox ready for burial.

He was to be buried in the back garden. The three of us gathered for a luscious funeral banquet of potato crisps and Lucozade.

We soon finished this off with as much reverence as we could manage and placed the little body in a matchbox in a hole dug in the soil.

 We made a little monument out of a card and wrote on it . Leonard Fairfax RIP

Then we were slightly at a loss. Sheila said “We must sing a sad song, like a hymn.

But we decided that Father Dan – our Sunday school vicar somehow wouldn’t like that. 

Apart from that we only knew songs that went “Baa baa black Sheep” or “Little Jack Horner.” None of which seemed appropriate.

We worried about this for some time and at last we came up with a tune that had the right sound. 

And that is why Leonard Fairfax our Baby butterfly friend was buried by his three mourners to the tune of “Red Sails in the Sunset”

It did seem a little odd, but I was sure Gentle Jesus wouldn’t mind.

Aline Waites

The Music:

https://www.doctoruke.com/_player/redsailsinthesunset.html

From Wikipedia:

Red Sails in the Sunset” is a popular song. Published in 1935, its music was written by Hugh Williams (pseudonym of Wilhelm Grosz) with lyrics by prolific songwriter Jimmy Kennedy.^[3] The song was inspired by the “red sails” of Kitty of Coleraine, a yacht Kennedy often saw off the northern coast of Northern Ireland and by his adopted town Portstewart, a seaside resort in County Londonderry.^[4]

The song was used in the Broadway production of Provincetown Follies, which ran from November 3 until December 19, 1935, at the Provincetown Playhouse.^[5]

Popular versions in 1935 were by Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo, Mantovani and Jack Jackson.^[6] Another early version was recorded by Al Bowlly with Ray Noble and his Orchestra on September 18, 1935. Louis Armstrong also had a hit with the song in 1936.^[7]

The song was revived by Nat King Cole in 1951. This version was released by Capitol Records as catalogue number 1468. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on July 13, 1951, and lasted two weeks on the chart, peaking at number 24.

It was also recorded by Tab Hunter in 1957. The Beatles often performed a rock-and-roll reworking of the song during their early years of nightclub engagements, with Paul McCartney doing the vocals. It was on their setlist when they played at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, in 1962.^[8] Vaughn Monroe also recorded this song in the late 1940s.^[9] Another version was released in 1954 on MGM 11977 by Sam “The Man” Taylor and His Orchestra, with Sam on tenor saxophone.

An instrumental version of the song became the signature tune of the Philippine radio drama series Dear Kuya Cesar, broadcast on DZMM radio (ABS-CBN Corporation) in the 1960s and hosted by Cesar Lacbu Nucum, a.k.a. Kuya Cesar. The song was also the signature tune of Suzette Tarri, a British actress and comedian popular on stage and radio in the 1930s and 1940s.

The song’s title inspires the Red Sails Festival, held annually in Portstewart, Northern Ireland. Kennedy wrote the song while staying in Portstewart.

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