Frenchmen Froth

Frenchmen Froth is a song written by J.R.R. Tolkien, to be sung to the tune of The Vicar of Bray. It is published as the 26th song in Songs for the Philologists in 1936.

The song

Frenchmen Froth

Though Frenchmen froth with furious sound
    And fill our frousty mansions,
And gurgling uvulas are ground,
    And tremblers pay 'attention';
Though History roll in dreary round
    Colonial expansion,
And king and parliamentary hound,
    And constitutional sanction,

This is my faith, I do maintain, until the stars shall fall, sir!
Let other lands be what they claim, is England best of all, sir!

In mathematics' mouldering shed
    Though tangled runes be written
By faces grave of men long dead
    That worms have sorely bitten;
Though Greek and Latin in one bed
    With sleeping-sickness ridden
Do dream of days when classics bled
    A weary world unchidden,

This is my faith, I do maintain, until the stars shall fall, sir!
Of all the arts this hath my heart - the English tongue fore all, sir!

Though Education quack, quack, quack
    And force upon our weasands
The nostrums from its nonsense pack
    In endless silly seasons
Though tyrant force behind our back
    Shall thrust us without reason
To halls that light and learning lack
    Where teachers talk of treason,

This is my faith, I do maintain, until the stars shall fall, sir!
That fear and false report shall not make English fall, sir!

Though some will strip their stupid souls
    (At least to the pyjamas),
Though sages green with puny polls
    Write dismal little dramas;
Though critics jibber in their holes
    Of style and form and metre,
Yet literature (the little moles!)
    They miss her when [they] meet her.

This is my faith, I do maintain, while songs by men are sung, sir!
They only earn the English name who learn the English tongue, sir!