Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain

(1)

Das Vulture Ans Das Nutter-Wain
Das Vulture Ans Das Nutter-Wain
La la la la la la

Das Vulture Ans Das Nutter Ein Wain
Vulture Ans Das Nutter-Wain
Vulture Ans Das Nutter Ein Wain

Jester
Jester
Parson's prayer (2)
So few and far between

Down and out
Carry on, clown (3)
Paint your face
And close your mouth
Vulture Ein das Nutter
La la la la la la

Vulture

Das Vulture Ans Das Ans Ein Nutter-Wain
Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain
La la la la la la
La la la la la la

Carry on clown
Ans Vulture
Ans Ein Nutter-Wain

1. MES once again shows off his fluent German with this one. Actually, only Das, Ans, and Ein are German, meaning, respectively, "the" (neutral gender), "onto the," and "one" or "a(n)." "Nutter" is slang for a mad person, whereas "wain" means "cart," so the title phrase could mean "The vulture lands on the nut-wagon"; "ein nutter wain" also sounds like "another one," and "ans" sounds like "an," so we might also get "The vulture and another one." Nutte is also German for "prostitute." And, Max Williams points out that "'Wain' is a Scottish word meaning 'child,' which MES could have encountered during his Edinburgh years, if not before. So 'nutter wain' could mean 'mad kid,'  Winter-style.

Brix remarks (The RIse, The Fall, and The Rise, via Dan), "Mark doesn't know German at all, but that doesn't stop him from speaking it. I think he learns it from Nazi war movies. Our current [at the time] album featured the lyric, 'Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain', which meant absolutely nothing."

Portsmouth Bubblejet: "It's grammatically impossible in German to have 'ans' and 'ein' next to each other. I'd therefore agree with Brix that the title is ultimately meaningless - it comes out as 'the vulture onto the a nutter-wain,' allowing for the fact that Germans would use 'der Geier' for 'vulture,' and would be baffled by 'nutter-wain.'"

Perhaps relevantly--although it's almost too intriguingly convoluted to be so--Dan points out that "Richard Wagner designed his own coat of arms, showing a vulture (representing his step-father - Ludwig Geyer, whose name sounds like Lammergeier, the German for vulture) holding a shield on which is depicted the constellation of the plough (representing his father - Wagner is not far from the German for wagon or cart, which in English can be 'wain')."

The music makes about as much sense as the lyrics on this one; in other words, it's pretty much perfect. This, in short, should be recognized by the world (were the world serious!) as a Fall classic.  

^

2. Yorick, the parson in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, is named for the jester in Hamlet. Martin points to an essay called Yorick's Congregation: the Church of England in the Time of Laurence Sterne which uses the phrase "jester parson."

^

3. In keeping with the vulture and the paranomasic nature of the lyrics, we should probably also hear "carrion" for "carry on."

Dan reports that there is a clown beetle sometimes called a "carrion clown" (Coleoptera: Histeridae). I'm inclined to think this is not a total coincidence, although Dan expresses skepticism, perhaps because the beetle is North American...

^

Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1996