When In the Sultry Glebe I Carve a Wicked Nosegrind…
It’s common practice for me, when sitting in church, to help one or both of my kids to find the hymns in the hymnal and help them sing along. This serves to entertain both me and the child for a few precious minutes, which anyone who takes kids to church can tell you, is worth all the gold in Solomon’s Temple (and is a topic worthy of another post entirely). I let the child in question hold the book open while I point to the words in time to the music like one of those bouncing balls in a sing-along video.
The last time this took place, the hymn happened to be #109, The Lord My Pasture Will Prepare, which is a fine hymn of prayer and supplication until you get to the second verse which begins as follows:
When in the sultry glebe I faint…
For the slightest moment, my finger hesitated here, trying to make out what exactly it was pointing at and thinking “Huh? Glebe?” Yes, glebe. A sultry one no less. So sultry, in fact, that it has apparently caused me to swoon.
You are probably asking yourself now, “what the heck is a glebe?” My answer would be: I have no idea. I’m pretty sure it’s a noun. It sounds like shorthand for “gleaming the cube” which would make perfect sense, if skateboarding had become popular somewhere around 1672, when Joseph Addison, the hymn’s author, was born. Unfortunately, skateboarding didn’t really take off until 1955 when, in a well documented event, Calvin “Marty” Klein invented the first skateboard by pulling the top off of a homemade scooter.1
But I’ve gotten off track. “Glebe” is the topic at hand, and I want to know what it is. This may prove more difficult than I thought, though, because even now a little red dotted line is under it which indicates that even the spell checker is thinking, “huh?”
So, this could have been a “Word of the Moment”, but frankly, I don’t want to look it up. I find that I enjoy the sense of wonder. Instead, I thought a call for comments would prove more satisfying. I’d like to know what you think a “glebe” is. Or maybe not what you think it actually is but what you think it should be. I’d also like to know what other bizarre song lyrics you’ve come across. They don’t have to be from hymns, of course, though they do provide plenty of fodder. Just be careful. If your glebe gets too sultry you might come down with a case of the vapors.
1. References are for the ignorant.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Well, I think the obvious answer to the age-old question, “What is a Glebe” is simple, and you were on the right track with Gleaming the Cube. Obviously Christian Slater had a little nasal blockage that day, so all attempts to pronounce “gleam” came out “glebe” instead.
A more important question might be this: If all glebes are flerms, and some flerms are plibs, is it true that all glebes are plibs?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
To understand the nature of a glebe, one must first examine the manner in which the word glebe appears in context. In this case, it is described as sultry. Knowing this, determining the nature of a glebe becomes a simple matter of following the line of logic first established by the wise and judicious Sir Bedevere (not to be confused with Mr. Belvedere), who taught us that by simple association, the true nature of all things can be determined.
So we know a glebe is sultry. What is also sultry? According to the Internet, the term sultry applies primarily to scantily clad women, most of whom are probably from the south. Why? Because the word sultry sounds good in an exaggerated southern accent. Go ahead and demonstrate that to yourself now. I’ll wait.
Merriam Webster defines sultry as “extremely hot; torrid.” I don’t know who Merriam Webster is, but I’m guessing she herself is not particularly sultry. I also don’t know what torrid is, but the descriptor “extremely hot” seems to apply to these sultry women, so logic dicates that torrid means “lacking sufficient clothing.”
So back to our Bedeverian logic (not Belvederian): if a glebe is sultry and a torrid woman is also sultry, then the glebe is made of wood, and therefore…a glebe clearly weighs the same as a duck.
Why were you singing about scantily clad ducks in church? That’s really weird.