Billy Joel does a song called Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, which contains another song inside it, Hamlet play-in-a-play style. The song is about Brenda and Eddy, a couple of Greasers (think Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta) who got married. It came to me that the names could be trivially changed to refer to a certain Duke and Duchess, and then the rest of the song just sort of wrote itself. The premise is simple: suppose the King and Queen skipped town with all the money in the kingdom coffers; who would you call to take over?
[March 2007]
Yo-yo and Aeddy had their Duchies already
When the King and the Queen ran away.
Something to do with a loft for two near the beach in Calais…
Nobody knew how to sort it,
Oh, and all of the funds had been “misreported”:
We never knew they were gone till the cops all arrived.
Surely, Yo-yo and Aeddy would step in to help us survive!
Yo-yo and Aeddy took over already, with the Officers all in a tizz:
Yo-yo was good with the reigning and ruling and all of that biz,
And everyone looked up to Aedward,
Strong as an oak and he’s not just dead wood;
We’re better to have them in charge in our moment of strife…
Oh, so there we were, crowning Yo-Yo and Aeddy for life.
So, they planned a republic with fair elections
And a couple of brave new frontiers;
A competent team that they picked from the cream
Of the crop of the best volunteers;
But it started to fall when the lawyers got called,
And they just didn’t count on the Peers…
Well they ruled for a while in their very cool style
But it’s always the same in the end:
A tourney was fought and was won by the sort
Who you knew would be back there again
And the King and the Queen took up their routine,
And the Duchess and Duke said “Amen”.
Yo-yo and Aeddy had kept it all steady
And we managed to prosper and thrive;
It was kind of a shame that it’s only a game,
But they both had their lives.
But next time it falls in a big heap,
Yo-yo and Aeddy will once more dig deep.
Trying to keep them away would be hard to contrive:
Oh, and that’s all I know about Yo-yo and Aeddy:
Any disaster, they’re hangin’ round ready,
And there we’ll be, crowning Yo-Yo and Aeddy for life.