It was the end of a Friday practice. We were all tired, and there was a game the next day. As rookies we were both nervous and excited for the upcoming event. We didn’t know what to expect. As it turned out, we were in for more than we bargained for. The vets knew what was in store for us, and as such, they took it upon themselves to give us all a little tutorial, as is customary to do before the first social of the year. This was my first real encounter with the “rugby genre”. Although I had heard girls singing crude lyrics and telling stories of past socials in previous practices, this was the practice in which it all came together.
Rugby is well known to be a cruel sport. Some know it as football without pads. Some people just call it crazy. Perhaps because of the grueling physical demands of the game, or perhaps because of its British roots, it is common rugby tradition that following the 80 minutes of war that we call a game, two teams get together to eat, drink, and be merry. Drinking songs included.
That being as it is, the rookies had to be prepared to sing with the opposing team after the game the following day. Instead of passing around lyric sheets, we were given a line-by-line tutorial, complete with hand motions. We were told that the song we learned is the signature song of our team. It is the song that we sing at the beginning of every social; opposing teams have their own unique songs as well, and this one was “ours”. In the spirit of tradition, we rookies listened and learned, repeating each line of our song in call-and-response style, and finally singing the song as a rookie class when our lesson ended. Perhaps the most interesting detail of our little sing-a-long was that we are never allowed to write the lyrics; songs are learned through oral tradition only.
I remember specifically a social in which the other team asked us to e-mail one of our songs to them. Our girls politely declined, offering to run the lines with them one by one, but firm in the belief that these songs should be passed on only by word of mouth.
Another notable detail about social songs: they are never appropriate. They tend to contain little more content than quips about the game, drinking, and sex. Individual teams each have their own specific “canon” of songs, as well. Songs last as long as they are passed down through the years and the veteran players can remember them to teach them to the younger players. While socialling, a team might encounter a group that sings the same introductory song as them, though slightly altered.
One way that teams make songs their own is through verse writing. This can be done on the fly or ahead of time. Rugby songs generally can be personalized so that players’ characteristics, tendencies on the field (or in the bedroom), or rugby aspects can be inserted easily in to the song. Players who would like to sing their verse raise their cup the their forehead while the previous verse is being sung. Others acknowledge who is next to sing her verse by pointing at the forehead-touching girl with their elbows. At the next verse, that player will say her part. Much of the time this is done to mock or joke with a teammate.
Find more music like this on Social Rugby Network
Listen to "If I Were the Marrying Kind".
Each verse is a different rugby position along with a sexual innuendo. Note that pianos do not often accompany rugby socials.
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Michelle, your topic is so excellent. I'm not a rugby player and I've never been to a rugby party, but I've seen the fervor with which rugby players attack their rugby songs. A couple years ago I was on a backpacking course with a bunch of people, including a female rugby player who went to a tiny college in Vermont and a male rugby player who went to Grinnell in Iowa. On the first day, as soon as each realized the other was a rugby player, they started figuring out songs that were common to each of their repertoires. Throughout the next couple months of the course, we would be going about our daily hiking and whatnot, and all of a sudden one would yell to the other "Hey! Do you know *insert rugby song name here*!?" And the other would. And so they would sing.
ReplyDeleteIt struck me as an incredible bond to have- their teams had never met, the played on single-sex teams, they had gone to school halfway across the country from one another, and yet they had this broad swath of shared knowledge that gave them an immediate sense of comraderie and common background in a situation about as far from a rugby pitch as one could possibly get.
Your fieldnotes provide a really nice supply of background information on rugby songs. I hope you'll be looking into the origin of the focus of the songs (competition, sex, booze), and also maybe on where the phenomenon of 3rd half singings came from in the first place. Additionally, as with any oral tradition, there must be a reason why some songs get passed down while others don't, and the fact that each team has its own collection of songs indicates fractured song lineages which could be fascinating (maybe in an impossible kind of way) to trace.
I look forward to reading more from your work!
This is an interesting topic. As someone who isn't familiar with Rugby, this type of tradition is very foreign to me. I've never encountered a sport where opposing teams gather after a game to socialize. That being said, I think that it's an awesome tradition.
ReplyDeleteI like the field notes, and I think that you will be able to do an excellent job doing an ethnographic study considering that you are actually part of the culture.
I do have a couple of questions about the drinking songs. You only posted one song, but it seemed very male oriented. What do the female song lyrics like? Are they just as crude only from a woman's point of view? Most female teams don't practice this sort of tradition, so do you think that there is something different about the rugby setting that allows for the team to do this and still function?
I find it really interesting that these songs are preserved strictly through oral-tradition and cannot be written down. Why do you think this is? It seems to me the oral tradition makes the songs more personal to every person who learns them, because they were taught to them by a team-mate and a friend, and didn’t merely read a piece of paper. The strictly oral tradition also seems to make the songs more private because they cannot be easily distributed. I know in other sports teams often have cheers, which serve a similar purpose to the songs you describe (in terms of building camaraderie, etc), but they seem much less personalized and definitely tamer than the rugby songs. I was also wondering –what were the hand motions? Were they crude to match the lyrics? I definitely think this a cool topic, and I’m interested to see how it plays out.
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