By The Landlord
“Oh well, bears will be bears,” said Mr Brown. – Michael Bond, More About Paddington
“The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.” – Margaret Atwood
“When a pine needle falls in the forest, the eagle sees it; the deer hears it, and the bear smells it.” – First Nations proverb
“Two bears in one cave will not end well.”– Mongolian proverb
Amid the vast, eternal ice,
The crystal plain, the drifting floe,
Dark chasm, awful precipice,
Buried for ages deep in snow,
The polar white bear, grim and gaunt,
Chooseth his solitary haunt. - Polar Bear, Isaac McLellan
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its chokecherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky. – The Bear, Robert Frost
When I was very young, I craved a cuddly Tyrannosaurus Rex. Instead I got a chubby, nut brown, probably pre-health-and-safety standards early-1970s highly inflammable faux-fur, yellow-dead-eyed teddy, though I happily welcomed his companionship into my own dream cave of sleep and imagination.
It’s strange though how the fiercest of creatures can be adopted by us as the friendliest and gentlest of friends. Bears couldn’t be further from it, but their furry bulk, perky small round ears, darting eyes, playful manner and dexterous hand-like claws do certainly draw the human mind into some parental-child cute ratio, and a strong anthropomorphic assumed relationship.
So then, we’re heading down into the woods today and beyond, hopefully in for a few surprises, and beyond naked necessity, with songs where bears feature prominently in title, lyric or theme, perhaps too in musical delivery capturing their qualities, and no doubt also in metaphor for all kinds of human contexts. They may be brown, black, or white bears, or even more than one of those colours, wild or tame, dancing or dangerous, playful or petulant, grizzly, panda, the largest polar, or any other species, perhaps even the smallest, the sun bear, real or imagined.
Their distinctive characteristics and behaviour, from acute sense of smell and curiosity, fearlessness, ravenous hunger, hibernation habits and ability to stand up straight on their unusual plantigrade feet might also come into play.
Their image adoption by towns, cities and countries, football or other teams for cultural representation, as mascots or other branding might also feature. Bears appear for example in flags of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland and beyond. They are everywhere. Who doesn’t want to be more bear?
Some of the many bearing flags, or flagging bears ...
Fictional bears too may well jump out too in lyrics, from the many in books, TV and film animation, from Yogi to Winnie-The-Pooh, Rupert to Paddington, SuperTed to Kung Fu Panda, Barney Bear to the ever enthusiastic Fozzie or sarcastic Bobo from The Muppets, The Gummi Bears, Biffo of The Beano, Gentle Ben, Bungle of TV’s Rainbow (among the strangest of bears), the fun-loving Hair Bear Bunch, The Three Bears of the Goldilocks fairy tale, the whistling TV hand puppet Sooty (yes I too have only just found out he was supposed to be a bear) and many more in a long traditional of cuddly, cheeky anthropomorphism.
Sticky situations: Paddington
Rupert: So ... what's going down in the woods today?
The Three Bears. Where's Goldilocks?
Your lyrical references might range more ethereally into the high and mighty heavens of myth and cosmology to the Great Bear star constellations Ursa Major and Minor (bears are part of Ursidae and Ursus taxonomy) to the weirder and more obscure of bear characters. Rasmus Klump, anyone? A little bear who owns a boat with which he travels the world. Japan’s Rilakkuma, the ‘Relax’ Bear? Or really out there, and arguably darker into the woods, South Park’s Peetie the Sexual Harassment Panda, a somewhat dubious mascot-wearing character who teaches kids about how to avoid such dangers. Hmm. Bears all! Watch Out!
Bears are alluring creatures, perhaps because of that gentle-cuddly-brutal-deadly axis. Best left to look at from a distance with their large, muscular bodies stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, short tails, and huge paws with five non-retractile claws. They’re endangered of course, hunted to near extinction at times, living in Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere in North America, South America, and Eurasia and very much affected by climate change. And just for the record, despite their name, koalas aren’t bears…
The English word bear comes from Old English bera and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages, such as Swedish björn. This form is conventionally said to be related to a Proto-Indo-European word for brown, so that bear would mean the brown one which links rather nicely to our brown topic of a couple of weeks ago, but of course that’s not the only colour of bear out there.
On thin ice ...
Of the eight main species, the polar bear is pretty much carnivorous, and the giant panda herbivorous, while the remaining six species are omnivorous, but all have a high-grade sense of smell. Those amazing plantigrade back paw feet make for a highly unusual ability to stand up and lumber around, or scratch big shoulder blades and backs on trees, while front claws are great for digging, climbing, tearing, and catching prey. Perhaps that’s also why they are beloved of humans.
Bear foot: the plantigrade design helps them sand upright. Drawing by Richard Owen, 1866
All this itching is making me scratch
Polar bears and the giant panda are the most opposite in specialised eating, while the others are more adaptive, scoffing anything from leaves, roots, and berries to insects, carrion, fresh meat, and fish, and have digestive systems and teeth adapted to such a wide diet. Bears are greedy and bulk up for winter. Asiatic black bears in Taiwan consume large numbers of acorns when these are most common, and switch to ungulates at other times of the year.
Best known of their tastes, perhaps due to fictional characters, bears radio the nests of wasps and bees for the honey and immature insects, in spite of stinging. Sun bears use their long tongues to lick up both insects and honey.
Meanwhile particularly for the browner bears including grizzlies, fish are an important source of food, so they gather in large numbers at salmon runs, ready to plunge into the water and seize with jaws or front paws.
Brutal or brave, beautiful or inspirational, bears inspire all kinds responses. They’ve been hunted to extinction, berated and bated, chain forced to “dance”, and now are battling against climate change. But hopefully they’ll survive.
One of the most powerful and strange films on the subject is Werner Herzog’s great Grizzly Man, his 2005 documentary about a bear obsessive activist and eccentric Timothy Treadwell, who lived with this partner Amie Huguenard among the beasts in Alaska. It’s a gripping film about a loner and and an oddball who has a strangely magnetic, child-like personality. First, here is the more romantic official trailer:
But then this, a darker passage from the film, including the distinctive, precise voice of Herzog too, summing up the starkness of it all. "Timothy looked into the eyes of the bears and saw a friend. All I saw the cold, brutal reality of nature." It’s not all romance … and perhaps Treadwell wanted the bears to be his teddy, but the truth was somewhat different.
But what kind of bear songs, sweet or savoury, might you fish out? It’s time to venture into the musical woods, where your choices will be perused by a brave soul for playlists published next week. Making his Song Bar debut - it’s the one and only Carpgate! Will he panda to your tastes? Deadline is 11pm UK time on Monday. Playlists will be published next week. Fur real. And on a lighter note, more to panda on …
Bamboo!
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Fancy a turn behind the pumps at The Song Bar? Care to choose a playlist from songs nominated and write something about it? Then feel free to contact The Song Bar here, or try the usual email address. Also please follow us social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: