Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Beecham's Pills version)

DESCRIPTION: "Hark the herald angels sing, Beecham's Pills are just the thing. Safe in use, in action mild, Two for man and one for child." Or, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Mrs. Simpson stole our king."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1983 (Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood)
KEYWORDS: commerce derivative royalty humorous
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 95, "Hark the herald angels sing" (1 text)
Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling, p. 58, "(Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs. Simpson stole our king)" (1 text)
Roud #32828
NOTES [155 words]: Probably there were several independent sarcastic parodies of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," but Steve Roud lumps them, so I will do so as well. The topics of the lampoon vary:
-- In the Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling version, it's "Mrs. Simpson," who "stole our king," is of course (Bessie) Wallace Warfield Simpson (1896-1986), the divorcee for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936.
-- In the Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood version, it's Beecham's Pills, a patent remedy marketed from about 1842 as a cure-all though their only real effect was for digestive ailments, and that only mild (which, to be sure, still made them better than most patent medicines, which weren't good for anything at all). Although they were still marketed as late as 1998, their heyday was in the nineteenth century (when they could be advertised as curing ailments they didn't actually treat), so this verse is presumably older. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: KSUC095C

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