The Gendarmes again

A few months ago, in a rather confused post which arrived at Offenbach’s song Les Deux Gendarmes by way of musings about South Pacific and the US Marines, I quoted its first (English) verse. In an email last week an old friend tells me that he has been unable to find the other verses anywhere on the net, though no doubt they are there somewhere.

This friend and his wife, for reasons best known to themselves, went to live in Western Australia some thirty years ago; they didn’t tell me they were going, and the email was the first I have heard from them since then. However, I do not bear grudges and, as my regular readers know, Other Men's Flowers has always been mindful of the desperate need for intellectual sustenance of people living – if that is the right word – in places such as Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Dumbleyung, Wooramel Roadhouse, Pinjarra and Jerramungup, and constantly strives to bring a little colour and excitement into their drab, miserable lives. Here, then, are the lyrics in full:

We're public guardians bold yet wary
And of ourselves we take good care
To risk our precious lives we're chary
When danger threatens we're not there
But when we see a helpless woman
Or little boys who do no harm…
We run them in, we run them in
We run them in, we run them in
To show them we're the beaux gendarmes (bis)

When young men like to make a riot
And punch each other’s heads at night
We are disposed to keep it quiet
Provided that they make it right
But if they do not seem to see it
Or give to us our proper alms…
We run them in, etc.

Sometimes our duty’s extramural
Then little butterflies we chase
We like to gambol in things rural
Commune with nature face to face
But when we go back to our duties
Refreshed by Nature’s holy charms…
We run them in, etc.

[You can hear a bit of it HERE, if you go down to Samples and click on 15. Or, if you thought it was by Gilbert and Sullivan, look HERE.]