It’s an archaic, southern English name for the European green woodpecker, picus viridis, that species of beautiful colour that taps on softer wood trunks to feed and nest, but how does such a bird come up in song? The name comes from the dialect word yaffle, an imitation of the bird’s call, sounding like a gentle laughter, combined with the last two syllables of nightingale. Alternative names include laughing Betsey, weather cock, rain bird, wet bird, nickle, Jack Eikle and nicker pecker. The bird’s diet is mostly ants’ their larvae and eggs, other insects, pine seeds and fruit. More timid than other woodpeckers and harder to spot they have distinctive green wings and red on their heads.
Yaffingale isn’t a word that seems to appear in songs, but what about woodpecker? And in what context. Perhaps best known is the chirpy The Woodpecker Song, which became a hit in 1940, and was recorded by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, The Andrews Sisters, and Kate Smith in 1940. However, its original title, Reginella Campagnola was an Italian song with music written by Eldo Di Lazzaro in 1939, Italian lyrics by Bruno Cherubini aka C Bruno, while English lyrics were written by Harold Adamson. What’s interesting about the song is while it’s an upbeat, apparently innocent number, it includes subtly sexual images. “Come and try his rhythm”:
He's up each morning bright and early
To wake up all the neighbourhood
To bring to every boy and girlie
His happy serenade on wood
Hear him pickin' out a melody
Peck, peck, peckin' at the same old tree
He's as happy as a bumblebee
All day long
To serenade your lady
Just find a tree that's shady
And when you hear that
Tick-a tick tick tick-a tick tick
Tick-a tick tick sing right along
Come on and try his rhythm
And let your hearts beat with 'im
Just listen to that
Tick-a tick tick tick-a tick tick
In Kay Kyser’s Woody Woodpecker song, recorded by Danny Kaye and the Sisters again in 1948, there’s even a violent side to that remorseless energy that will make other woodpeckers “swoon”, and with that cheesily annoying refrain, in a song associated with the screwball cartoon character who first appeared in 1941:
Woody Woodpecker
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
Oh, that's the Woody Woodpecker song
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
Yeah, he's a-peckin' it all day long
He pecks a few holes in a tree to see
If a redwood's really red
And it's nothing to him, on the tiniest whim
To peck a few holes in your head
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
Oh, that's the Woody Woodpecker's tune
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
Makes the other woodpeckers swoon
Though it doesn't make sense to the dull and the dense
And the lady woodpeckers long for
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
That's the Woody Woodpecker song
A less musically manic, more bucolic, tranquil depiction of the bird, among others, meanwhile comes in Donovan’s A Sunny Day:
Sunny day while away the afternoon
Cutting nettles that are hiding petals pink
From the river drink
Bluebells, wood dells where dwells a squirrel
Who slinks along branched patterns heightens call of coaltit small
Hover over river
Diving, writhing, gnattring chiff chaff chattering
Woodpecker staggering hammering
Exaggerating off his find
Yellow Bellied Sapsucker by Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan uses the woodpecker to express perhaps emotional, sexual frustration:
Well now I feel like a redheaded woodpecker peckin' at a cast iron tree
Just a huffin' and a peckin' and a bangin' my brains out
Talking of hitting hard surfaces, The Handsome Family’s Woodpecker, released in 2013, vividly uses the woodpecker as a metaphor to tell the story of the infamously “window smasher” Mary Sweeny, a troubled women eventually locked in an asylum, after suffering from a mania for breaking glass windows across across Wisconsin and neighbouring states during the 1890s:
Lovely Mary Sweeny, the famous window smasher
Was just a quiet school marm from Lacrosse, Wisconsin
She took a pinch of cocaine but only for her nerves
Laudanum for trembling hands, a little bottle in her purse
She was a woodpecker, she couldn't help but see
All the things that hide inside all the pretty trees
At dusk she took a train, just a hammer in her bag
She went from town to town, smashing every pane of glass
Storefronts, mirrors, windshields shattered in the night
A hammer through a window's gleam filled the air with light
She was a woodpecker, she couldn't help but free
All the things that hide inside all the pretty trees
In the state asylum, the windows caged in bars
They soaked her in an ice-cold bath till she was seeing stars
Wrapped up in her straitjacket her mind still hammered on
Till the glass inside her smashed and she flew off into the trees
She was a woodpecker, she couldn't help but see
All the things that hide inside all the pretty trees
The woodpecker keeps returning as not only sexual metaphor in many forms of music but also for its stamina in other ways. Parliament-Funkadelic’s Funkentelechy from the Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome album of (1977) picks up on the stamina of its banging abilities to be “Mr Prolong” to play funk for lengthy periods of time:
Mood control is designed to render funkable
Ideas brought to you by the makers of Mr. Prolong
Better known as Urge Overkill
The pimping of the Pleasure Principle
Oh, but we'll be pecking lightly
Like a woodpecker with a headache
'Cause it's cheaper to funk
Than it is to pay attention
You dig?
Hip hop is rife with phallic associations of the bird’s activity, with of course the words pecker and wood already serving their own purpose. Among the catchiest, and if not exactly subtel, is The Pharcyde’s Oh Shit from 1992's acclaimed album Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde.
Little Sally Walker, sittin' in a saucer
Oh, how I tossed that ass up
Like a mission in the woods, Woody Woodpecker would if he could
But I didn't want to pass it up
So then are there any other woodpecker examples in song taking flight, or indeed banging away in your head? Feel free to share any examples in songs, instrumentals, on albums, film, art or other contexts in comments below.
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