Lyrical Exegesis

White Mountain by Genesis from the album Trespass, 1970

Lyrically, the song tells a fable of a wolf named Fang, who seeks to usurp the authority of the pack leader (an old undefeated hero known as One-Eye) by learning of the crown and sceptre known only to the king. The sentence for Fang's sin is death. As the song progresses, Fang is chased by a pack of wolves led by One-Eye, before falling before the king in an epic final battle between the two. One-Eye then hides the crown and returns to his pack in peace.

The lyrics initially describe the characters as wolves, but later refer to One Eye performing actions which appear to mark him out as a human (e.g .raising a sceptre). This may be an attempt in the song to blur the race of the characters between human and animal, or may be meant to refer to a possibly lycanthropic aspect of One Eye or indeed the entire pack. Perhaps it is the crown and sceptre which bestow this power upon the wearer? 

The album title is alluded to in the song as Fang is said to have "trespassed where no wolf may tread," save the king himself. 

The names of Fang and One Eye are borrowed from Jack London's novel White Fang. In the story, Fang has the first name of White, and One Eye is Fang's father. The song and the story differ in every other respect. 

This could be seen conceptually as a further development from the song "One-Eyed Hound" off the first album "From Genesis to Revelation"

White Mountain

Thin hung the web like a trap in a cage,

 The fox lay asleep in his lair.

If this is the fox in Foxtrot, and Peter is the Fox, then later in one of the Fox's transformations as the character Rael he is indeed trapped in a cage in the song "In the Cage"

Fangs frantic paws told the tale of his sin,
Far off the chase shrieked revenge.

Outcast he trespassed where no wolf may tread,
The last sacred haunt of the dead.
He learnt of a truth which only one wolf may know,
The sceptre and crown of the king.

Howling for blood, one-eye leads on the pack,
Plunging through forest and snowstorm.

Steep rose the ridge, ghostly peaks climbed the sky,
Fang sped through jungles of ice.

Hard on his tail, one-eye drew from the pack -
An old hero conquered by none.
Steep, far too steep, grew the pathway ahead,
Descent was the only escape.

A wolf never flees in the face of his foe,
Fang knew the price he would pay -
One-eye stood before him
With the crown upon his head,
Sceptre raised to deal the deadly blow.

Fang, son of great fang, the traitor we seek,
The laws of the brethren say this:
That only the king sees the crown of the gods,
And he, the usurper, must die.
Snarling he tore at the throat of his foe,
But fang fought the hero in vain.

Dawn saw the white mountain tinted with red -

Never would the crown leave again.
One-eye hid the crown and with laurels on his head
Returned amongst the tribe and dwelt in peace.

The Knife by Genesis from the album Trespass, 1970

This song's lyrics concern Peter Gabriel's reflections on violent revolutions, showing how those who use violence in the name of freedom are only interested in establishing their own dictatorship.

But it's also easy to hear this as a kind of statement against the cult of all kinds of avantgarde terror groups (the Baader-Meinhof group, the Weathermen etc) and guerillas which flourished around 1970.

The song seems written from the perspective of leader of such a group who fills impressionable followers minds with heroic promises. His crusade seems to be the only thing he has to live for 'tell me my life is about to begin', which is the same reason others follow him because they also have nothing to lose.

It seems like after the line 'WE HAVE WON', the militant leader from whom the song is written from is the now the figure he was rebelling against, repeating the line almost from like a public annoucement system as propaganda, "Martyrs of course...".

Peter himself is quoted as saying that Ghandi was one of the few politicians he has real respect for.

This could be seen conceptually as a further development of the song "The Conqueror" from the first album, "From Genesis to Revelation".


The Knife

For Those that Trespass against us

Tell me my life is about to begin
Tell me that I am a hero,
Promise me all of your violent dreams
Light up your body with anger.
Now, in this ugly world
it is time to destroy all this evil.
Now, when I give the word
get ready to fight for your freedom
Now -

Stand up and fight, for you know we are right
We must strike at the lies
That have spread like disease through our minds.
Soon we'll have power, every soldier will rest
And we'll spread out our kindness
To all who our love now deserve.
Some of you are going to die -
Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide.

I'll give you the names of those you must kill,
All must die with their children.
Carry their heads to the palace of old,
Hang them high, let the blood flow.
Now, in this ugly world
break all the chains around us,
Now, the crusade has begun
give us a land fit for heroes,
Now -

Stand up and fight, for you know we are right
We must strike at the lies
That have spread like disease through our minds.
Soon we'll have power, every soldier will rest
And we'll spread out our kindness
To all who our love now deserve.
Some of you are going to die -
Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide.

We are only wanting freedom
We are only wanting freedom
We are only wanting freedom
We are only wanting freedom ("Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom...")
We are only wanting freedom ("Things are getting out of control here today")
We are only wanting freedom ("OK men - fire over their heads!")
We are only wanting freedom

--- WE HAVE WON ---

Some of you are going to die,
Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide.

The Musical Box by Genesis from the album Nursery Cryme, 1971

In Victorian England, the nursery was usually situated at the top of the house, reached by several flights of stairs. A little wicket gate across the landing prevented small children tumbling downstairs, and a solid wooden door muffled noises from the rest of the house. Here the nursemaid spent much of her time washing, dressing and undressing the children. This task was made all the more time consuming by the sheer volume of clothing considered proper for a baby. The coal fire was kept alight on all but the hottest days, as the top rail of the guard was used for airing the children's clothes.

Once the children were washed and dressed, breakfast was sent up from the kitchen. During the morning there would be lessons, followed by lunch, which was usually eaten in the nursery. After a short sleep in the afternoon, followed by a walk in the park, the children were washed and changed and taken down to the parlour to spend an hour with Mama. Here they talked politely, sang or recited to visitors, or listened to music before returning to the nursery for tea. After tea there was time to play with their toys and games for a while before they were washed and put to bed.

One of the day games would be Croquet, a game who's origins are not quite clear, though it may have come from French Lawn Billiards. It seems to be undisputed, however, that a game called Crookey was played in Ireland from the 1830's and that, in 1852, it was brought to England where it quickly became popular. It was particularly popular with women because it was the first outdoor sport which could be played by both sexes on an equal footing. A well established image brought to mind is the playing of Croquet using flamingoes as mallets in Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland. Paul Whitehead's cover for Nursery Cryme alludes to Alice's adventures and brings to mind a simple visual pun: Head Games.

Perhaps the most important difference between the Alice books and more conventional children's stories of mid-Victorian Britain is a difference in the author's attitude towards his audience. For a middle and upper class child, growing up in Victorian times may have been something less than a happy experience. It was an age of the nanny and the governess; children were shunted off to the nursery, brought out to spend an hour with their mothers in the late afternoon, and then whisked off again. When they reached school age, they were packed off to preparatory and then public schools, where they learned to fear schoolmasters and mistresses, and even more, one another. School was too often the arena of the bully: violence was rampant. To survive at the English boarding school, one had to be strong and resourceful enough to outwit one's classmates. Lewis Carol seemed to remain aware of how children growing up in his time would feel when writing his nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

"In Britain", says one British citizen, "people grew up with these stories like 'Don't go into certain moors', and you'd hear horror stories about psychopaths and whatever, and nursery rhymes fulfilled this function, they were a warning not to do certain things, advice for life in some ways." As the 20th century progressed, fairy tales were pushed further and further into the nursery, published in children's editions influenced by the Victorian and Disney versions. The entire genre came to be viewed as simple, silly, sexist stories in which passive, dutiful, beautiful girls grew up to marry rich Prince Charmings. It was largely forgotten that in centuries past fairy tales had not been so simple and saccharine, happy endings had not been guaranteed, and heroines had not sat passively awaiting rescue by a passing prince. Fairy tales in the past had looked unflinchingly at the darkest parts of life: at poverty, hunger, abuse of power, domestic violence, incest, rape, the sale of young women to the highest bidder in the form of arranged marriages, the effects of remarriage on family dynamics, the loss of inheritance or identity, the survival of treachery or calamity.

The origins of the Nursery Rhyme lyrics of Old King Cole are based in history dating back to 3rd century. There is considerable confusion regarding the origins of Old King Cole as there are three possible contenders who were Celtic Kings of Britain, all who share the name Coel. It is interesting here, because this is an already existing Nursery Rhyme inside the song The Musical Box, which purports to be a Victorian Fairy Tale in itself, though a darker fairy tale exposing the underbelly of society that resulted from the nature of a repressed culture.

The term Victorian has acquired a range of connotations, including that of a particularly strict set of moral standards, which are often applied hypocritically. This stems from the image of Queen Victoria—and her husband, Prince Albert, perhaps even more so—as innocents, unaware of the private habits of many of her respectable subjects; this particularly relates to their sex lives. This image is mistaken: Victoria's attitude toward sexual morality was a consequence of her knowledge of the corrosive effect of the loose morals of the aristocracy in earlier reigns upon the public's respect for the nobility and the Crown.

Victorian prudery sometimes went so far as to deem it improper to say "leg" in mixed company; instead, the preferred euphemism “limb” was used. Those going for a swim in the sea at the beach would use a bathing machine. However, historians Peter Gay and Michael Mason both point out that we often confuse Victorian etiquette for a lack of knowledge. For example, despite the use of the bathing machine, it was also possible to see people bathing nude. Another example of the gap between our preconceptions of Victorian sexuality and the facts is that contrary to what we might expect, Queen Victoria liked to draw and collect male nude figure drawings and even gave her husband one as a present

Steven Marcus, an author dealing with Victorian erotic novels notes:

"Pornography is, after all, nothing more than a representation of the fantasies of infantile sexual life, as these fantasies are edited and reorganized in the masturbatory daydreams of adolescence...."

Now this conclusion may be true of the novels Marcus studies, or indeed, even of most Victorian erotica; but the distinction that must be made is that Victorian erotic writing is anomalous in the history of the genre. Neither before the nineteenth century nor after it is erotic literature so deadening and so unrealistic, so reduced to mechanical fantasies. When the Dionysian element in literature is accorded its rightful place by a society, it is a complex mixture of reality and fantasy; only when it is forced underground does it fit Marcus' description. He is misleading when he judges pornography at its worst.

Repression was the basis of Victorian civilization; it is not the psychology likely to produce a healthy erotic literature.It has become an axiom of popular psychology that the repression of pleasure equals the expression of cruelty to the same intensity. In Victorian times rigid repression twisted sexuality into a small and private violence which manifested itself in the rod. But the rod would come to seem an amusement next to the violence of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century people became replaceable parts in the factories of progress. Victorian erotica mirrors this condition, and we can see in its scenes of whippings, for instance, a hint of worse violence to come, as people reacted to the suppression of their erotic natures.

Into this scene we are told this story:

While Henry Hamilton-Smythe minor (8) was playing croquet with Cynthia Jane De Blaise-William (9), sweet-smiling Cynthia raised her mallet high and gracefully removed Henry's head.

(Peter's live intro would describe how Henry's spirit went all the way upwards, and then all the way back down again, because he'd been rejected up there and told to come back at the opening of his old Musical Box.)

Two weeks later, in Henry's nursery, she discovered his treasured musical box. Eagerly she opened it and as "Old King Cole" began to play, a small spirit-figure appeared. Henry had returned - but not for long, for as he stood in the room his body began ageing rapidly, leaving a child's mind inside. A lifetime's desires surged through him.

Play me Old King Cole

That I may join with you,

All your hearts now seem so far from me

It hardly seems to matter now.

And the nurse will tell you lies

Of a kingdom beyond the skies.

But I am lost within this half-world,

It hardly seems to matter now.

Play me my song.

Here it comes again.

Play me my song.

Here it comes again.

Just a little bit,

Just a little bit more time,

Time left to live out my life.

Play me my song.

Here it comes again.

Play me my song.

Here it comes again.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he.

So he called for his pipe,

And he called for his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

But the clock, tick-tock,

On the mantlepiece -

And I want, and I feel, and I know, and I touch,

Her warmth...

She's a lady, she's got time,

Brush back your hair, and let me get to know your face.

She's a lady, she is mine.

Brush back your hair, and let me get to know your flesh.

I've been waiting here for so long

And all this time has passed me by

It doesn't seem to matter now

You stand there with your fixed expression

Casting doubt on all I have to say.

Why don't you touch me, touch me,

Why don't you touch me, touch me,

Touch me now, now, now, now, now...

Unfortunately the attempt to persuade Cynthia Jane to fulfill his romantic desire led his nurse to the nursery to investigate the noise. Instinctively Nanny hurled the musical box at the bearded child, destroying both.

At the end of the live version, Peter Gabriel would always slide down his mike stand in an incredibly phallic kind of way, denoting the demise of Spirit-Henry.

Cynthia showing some limb.

For Absent Friends by Genesis from the album Nursery Cryme, 1971


One can imagine the scene in the nursery ending with little murderess Cynthia fearfully clutching her Nurse and watching for signs of life within the broken remains of the Musical Box scattered upon the foor. Were this a series of connected films, we could pull back from this scene and float out the window into the unassuming and idyllic English countryside and down the lane towards a village church. We would pan past a clock-tower who's face lets us know it was 6 o'clock p.m. We have travelled from the complex darkness of  The Musical Box where a spirit haunts (and attempts to rape!) his killer, to a simple life where two people visit a church to remember and pray for their deceased friends/spouses with love and respect.


Sunday at six when they close both the gates
a widowed pair,
still sitting there,
Wonder if they're late for church
and it's cold, so they fasten their coats
and cross the grass, they're always last.


Passing by the padlocked swings,
the roundabout still turning,
ahead they see a small girl
on her way home with a pram.


Inside the archway,
the priest greets them with a courteous nod.
He's close to God.
Looking back at days of four instead of two.
Years seem so few (four instead of two).
Heads bent in prayer
for friends not there.


Leaving twopence on the plate,
they hurry down the path and through the gate
and wait to board the bus
that ambles down the street. 


This simple scene is such an interesting counterpoint to the Musical Box. Who is this little duo, and who have they lost? Why are they always last? Why does the Priest look back at days of four instead of two? Does this indicate the Priest's knowledge of the larger scope of things? Also in this song are some great words that are decidedly British.


Widowed is the past tense of the verb form of the noun "Widow" - to make someone a widow, and doesn't need to apply to the death of a husband. It can mean to deprive of anything cherished or needed: "A surprise attack widowed the army of its supplies". This pair have lost some friends. Tony Banks has mentioned these could be widows who have lost their husbands in the war.


Roundabout is an interesting British word that describes a playground carousel.
Pram is always an interesting British word. It means "baby carriage," and is from 1884 - a shortening of "perambulator". Perhaps influenced by pram "flat-bottomed boat" (1548), from O.N. pramr, from Balto-Slavic (cf. Pol. pram "boat," Rus. poromu "ferryboat"). One great line from the song "Camelot" in Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail is "I have to push the Pram alot". It seems they were hard-pressed to disccover things that rhymed with "Camelot".

The first twopence was a silver coin issued for Charles II in about 1660, but was undated, as used to be the normal practice. This was a hammered coin, and there were three slightly different issues of twopence between 1660 and 1662. From 1668 onwards, milled (machine made) twopences were issued almost every year. Charles II's was the reign when the production of hammered coinage finished, and was replaced completely by milled issues, although machine production had started during the reign of Elizabeth I. In 1971, the year Nursey Cryme was released, the decimal twopence or two pence became legal tender, although it had been available for some time before as part of a five coin familiarisation pack issued in a blue wallet.

The Return of the Giant Hogweed by Genesis from the album Nursery Cryme, 1971

From our brief pastoral respite, our camera of the mind follows the bus for a bit as it ambles out of the village, and floats onwards - eventually letting the bus go and settling on a clump of unlikely looking plants growing near the ditch on the side of the road. They begin to stir, and the music begins to play...

The really interesting thing about the Giant Hogweed, is that like a lot of Peter Gabriel's lyrics, they are based on something real!

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), is a member of the family Apiaceae, native to the Caucasus Region and Central Asia. ("Long ago in the Russian hills") It may reach 2-5 metres (rarely to 7 m) tall. Except for size, it closely resembles Common Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), Heracleum sosnowskyi or Garden Angelica (Angelica archangelica).

It is further distinguished by a stout, dark reddish-purple stem and spotted leaf stalks that are hollow and produce sturdy bristles. Stems vary from 3-8 cm in diameter, occasionally up to 10 cm. The stem shows a purplish-red pigmentation with raised nodules. Each purple spot on the stem surrounds a hair, and there are large, coarse white hairs at the base of the leaf stalk. The plant has deeply incised compound leaves which grow up to 1-1.7 m in width.("Kill them with your Hogweed hairs")

Many foreign plants were introduced to Britain in the 19th century, mainly for ornamental reasons. Giant hogweed is native to the Caucasus mountains of southwest Asia. It was brought to Europe by 19th century naturalist explorers (CABI, no date) and subsequently escaped, spreading throughout much of Europe and the UK. ("A Victorian explorer found the regal Hogweed by a marsh, He captured it and brought it home.") A few have become aggressively dominant, creating serious problems in some areas. It is now widespread throughout the British Isles especially along riverbanks. ("Around every river and canal their power is growing.") By forming dense stands they can displace native plants and reduce wildlife interests. It has also spread in the northeastern and northwestern United States. It is equally a pernicious invasive species in Germany, France and Belgium, overtaking the local species. It was introduced in France in the 19th century by botanists, much appreciated by beekeepers.

Once again, the album Nursery Cryme alludes to a Victorian theme.

Giant Hogweed is a phototoxic plant. Its sap can cause phytophotodermatitis (severe skin inflammations) when the skin is exposed to sunlight or to UV-rays. ("They all need the sun to photosensitize their venom.") Initially the skin colours red and starts itching. Then blisters form as in burns within 48 hours. They form black or purplish scars, which can last several years. Hospitalisation may become necessary. Presence of minute amounts of sap in the eyes, can lead to temporary or even permanent blindness. 

Real life victim of Real life Hogweed!

These reactions are caused by the presence of linear derivatives of furocoumarin in its leaves, roots, stems, flowers, and seeds. These chemicals can get into the nucleus of the epithelial cells, forming a bond with the DNA, causing the cells to die. The brown colour is caused by the production of melanin by furocoumarins. In Germany, where this plant has become a real nuisance, there were about 16,000 victims in 2003. Herbicides such as 2,4-D, TBA, MCPA and dicamba will kill above ground parts but are reportedly not particularly effective on persistent rootstalks. ("They seem immune to all our herbicidal battering.")

An actual representation of Giant Hogweed is recreated on the back cover of Nursery Cryme, as well as the inside gatefold in the picture that accompanies the lyrics to the song.

Another side to this seems to be the almost science-fiction edge that Peter gives to this tale - endowing the Giant Hogweed with more sentient faculties. On almost every mention of actual Giant Hogweed I can find, it seems there is always the inevitable reference to Triffids.

The triffid is a highly venomous fictional plant species, the titular antagonist from the 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham and also later appears in Simon Clark's novel The Night of the Triffids.

Triffids were also featured in the 1957 BBC radio dramatization of Wyndham's book, in a considerably altered film which was produced in 1962, and in a more faithful television serial which was produced by the BBC in 1981.

The name may be related to the Trifid Nebula, a region of star formation originally named by John Herschel because it appeared to have three components, resembling a three-lobed flower in photographs taken in visible light. (A photo of "The Triffid Nebula in Sagittarius" graces some releases of King Crimson's "Islands" album)

Wyndham hints at but never fully reveals the origin of his triffid species. Twenty or more years prior to the events of The Day of the Triffids, the original "gossamer-slung" triffid seeds, stolen from a Soviet research facility, were dispersed worldwide after the aircraft they were packed in was destroyed at high-altitude during the Cold War.

Soon after the discovery of the first triffid seeds, the story's scientists learned that their bodies were a potentially lucrative source of protein and natural oils.

Despite their dangerous nature, it was determined that the value of a triffid outweighed the risks, and people began to cultivate them as a commercial crop. This resulted in triffid seeds being spread all over the world in a comparatively short space of time: within 20 years, triffids were a common crop in numerous countries.

Though triffids kept by private breeders and collectors had their stings docked for safety reasons, most commercially grown triffids were left with their stings attached, as docking was found to reduce the quality of the oil that they produced.

This situation persisted for many years, until a burst of light, initially thought to be from a comet, but later speculated to be a high-altitude weapons discharge, blinded much of the human race.

Without sighted keepers to maintain their fences and to check the tethers that kept them in place, small groups of triffids began escaping from their farms and established wild populations. Urban triffids, with nobody to prevent their stings from regrowing, soon joined them.

Although slow moving and lacking in intelligence, newly freed triffids found blind humans to be easy targets and began to attack them.

As starvation, disease, accidents, and infighting further reduce human numbers, the increasingly bold and numerous triffids begin to take over, forcing humans out of the cities and into isolated hamlets and fortified farms in the countryside.

A final word on this is that Peter Gabriel is a vegetarian, and this could be a fabulous way to vent some veggie frustration at meat eaters by having plants come and eat them.

Seven Stones by Genesis from the album Nursery Cryme, 1971

I heard the old man tell his tale:


Tinker, alone within a storm,
And losing hope he clears the leaves beneath a tree,
Seven stones
Lay on the ground.
Within the seventh house a friend was found.
And the changes of no consequence will pick up the reins from nowhere.


Sailors, in peril on the sea,
Amongst the waves a rock looms nearer, and not yet seen.
They see a gull
Flying by.
The Captain turns the boat and he asks not why.
And the changes of no consequence will pick up the reins from nowhere.
Nowhere.


Despair that tires the world brings the old man laughter.
The laughter of the world only grieves him,
believe him,
The old man's guide is chance.


I heard the old man tell his tale:


Farmer, who knows not when to sow,
Consults the old man clutching money in his hand.
And with a shrug,
The old man smiled,
Took the money, left the farmer wild.
And the changes of no consequence will pick up the reins from nowhere.
Nowhere.


Despair that tires the world brings the old man laughter.
The laughter of the world only grieves him,
believe him,
The old man's guide is chance. 


On Tinker:


Why is a tinker's dam (or is it damn?) worthless? And what exactly is it?
Tinker is defined as 'a mender of pots, kettles, pans, etc., usually an itinerant'. However, a second definition, which says something about what people thought of these traveling fixer-uppers, portrays a tinker as 'an unskillful or clumsy worker; bungler'. The idea of worthlessness begins to hover about. As for the worthless item itself, damn it is, at least according to the prevalent opinion of word-origin sages, although both dam and damn have their advocates. 


The dam camp was first represented in the Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, by Edward Knight, in 1877. There, a tinker's dam is described as a small wall of dough used by a tinker as a barrier to hold melted solder within a certain area until it has cooled. Since the dam could be used only once, after which it was completely useless, it would then have to be thrown away. Knight theorized that the saying not worth a tinker's damn grew from this practice, "usually involving the wrong spelling of the otherwise innocent word dam" 


Oddly, it's more likely that damn became dam than the other way around. There is no evidence in glossaries or other word books of the time that the little glob of dough or clay used by tinkers was called a dam until after the expression became popular. And not worth a tinker's damn is first attested in the writings of Henry David Thoreau in 1839, 38 years before the publication of Knight's book. Consequently, Knight's explanation, while often repeated, is generally considered unfounded, yet another example of folk etymology. Dam was a likely euphemism--an attempt, whether conscious or not, to make the phrase acceptable in polite company. 


Further evidence for damn includes the existence of the similar phrase not worth a tinker's curse as well as early use (1817, Lord Byron, and after) of not worth a damn with tinker noticeably absent. Added later, it provided color and emphasis to a well-known preexisting phrase. The notion of the tinker's damn exemplifying something of no value is rooted in the tinkers' reputation for rampant swearing, making their frequently overheard damns so common as to have little or no impact. Hence, as purveyors of shock, tinkers' damns were particularly worthless, even more so than ordinary damns. 


The long-standing pursuit of vivid imagery in this saying continues. Historically, various ideas, people, objects, statements, etc., have been condemned as not worth a continental, a curse, a damn, a mite, a penny, a pin, a whistle, or shucks. A certain four-letter word is currently a major candidate to fill that blank. 


An Old Man is telling us a tale of Tinker. Tinker could be an old man in this song. He clears the leaves beneath some trees and finds seven stones, so then counts seven houses, and in that one he finds a friend. Synchronicity or chance? We are told in this song that the Old Man's guide is chance, so Tinker could very well  be an Old Man. 
The way he uses the seven stones is not disimilar to divination like I-Ching - itself called The Book of Changes. The hundreds of symbols of it's trigrams combine in random pairings when hexagrams are cast, and decisions are made from these. 
Then we are told that the "Changes of no consequence will pick up the reins from nowhere." So, first off - what are changes of no consequence? That would be anything that becomes different, transforms, or alters - but has no logical or natural followup from such an action or condition. Has no importance. Then we look at "pick up the reins" - to know how to use reins is to be able to guide your horse. To pick up the reins to guide your self is, of course, a more metaphorical type of reins, to guide your own destiny, and to pick them up from nowhere is tantamount to saying you can pick them up from anywhere. So - Unimportant changes will guide your life at anywhere and at anytime? How about Random things can and will guide you? Or - as we are let in on in the lyrics - The Old Man's Guide is Chance.


Now, why is that? Well, taking the reversal of the statement, we get "The Young Man's Guide [to life] is Predictably on Purpose". Compare this with other instances of Old/Young in Peter Gabriel's lyrics. "Young man says 'you are what you eat' - eat well. Old man says 'you are what you wear' - wear well."


The Old Man, obviously, has experience that the Young Man does not. Joseph Cambell notes that the noble heart is sombre in the midst of great celebration, and joyous when all around is despair. This seems to place this behaviour in the realm of the balancing factor - making certain that people's good spirits do not get the best of them, and conversely making sure that people are not eaten up in despair by joining in to either of these two emotional extremes. Compare with the line "Despair that tires the world brings the Old Man laughter, the laughter of the world only grieves him..." The Old Man apparently places an equal importance on the idea of Random Chance guiding his destiny as he does with the idea of Solid Predictability - itself open to random factors that can disturb and ruin "the best laid plans of mice and men."

The Fountain of Salmacis by Genesis from the album Nursery Cryme, 1971



Hermaphrodite: a flower containing both male and female organs; a
person or animal of both sexes.
The child Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, the
result of a secret love affair. For this reason he was entrusted to the
nymphs of the isolated Mount Ida, who allowed him to grow up as a
wild creature of the woods. After his encounter with the water-nymph
Salmacis, he laid a curse upon the water. According to fable, all persons
who bathed in the water became hermaphrodites.

From a dense forest of tall dark pinewood,
Mount Ida rises like an island.
Within a hidden cave, nymphs had kept a child;
Hermaphroditus, son of gods, so afraid of their love.

As the dawn creeps up the sky
The hunter caught sight of a doe.
In desire for conquest,
He found himself within a glade he'd not beheld before.

Hermaphroditus:
"Where are you, my father?
Give wisdom to your son"

Narrator:
"Then he could go no farther
Now lost, the boy was guided by the sun"

And as his strength began to fail
He saw a shimmering lake.
A shadow in the dark green depths
Disturbed the strange tranquility.

Salmacis:
"The waters are disturbed
Some creature has been stirred"

Narrator:
"The waters are disturbed
Naiad queen Salmacis has been stirred"

As he rushed to quench his thirst,
A fountain spring appeared before him
And as his heated breath brushed through the cool mist,
A liquid voice called, "Son of gods, drink from my spring".

The water tasted strangely sweet.
Behind him the voice called again.
He turned and saw her, in a cloak of mist alone
And as he gazed, her eyes were filled with the darkness of the lake.

Salmacis:
"We shall be one
We shall be joined as one"

Narrator:
"She wanted them as one
Yet he had no desire to be one"

Hermaphroditus:
"Away from me cold-blooded woman
Your thirst is not mine"

Salmacis:
"Nothing will cause us to part
Hear me, O Gods"

Unearthly calm descended from the sky
And then their flesh and bones were strangely merged
Forever to be joined as one.

The creature crawled into the lake.
A fading voice was heard:
"And I beg, yes I beg that all who touch this spring
May share my fate"

Salmacis:
"We are the one
We are the one"

Narrator:
"The two are now made one,
Demi-god and nymph are now made one"

Both had given everything they had.
A lover's dream had been fulfilled at last,
Forever still beneath the lake.



And to round out the Victorian theme, we present:

Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Philosophy of Androgyny, Hermaphrodeity, and Victorian Sexual Mores

Jessica Simmons '07, English and History of Art 151, Brown University, 2004

The Victorian Aesthetic avant-garde sought to question the socially encrypted structure of morality, whose suitability comes into question by means of the avant-garde's ability to stretch and ultimately associate the socially accepted with the perverse and grotesque. Algernon Charles Swinburne, described by George du Maurier in 1864 as "the most extraordinary man," however a "little beast" with "an utterly perverted moral sense", exhibited a poetic fascination with the complex nature of the perverse and the grotesquely unacceptable, which he, in a Baudelairien fashion, attempted to redirect as "an avant-gardist aesthetic declaration".
William Michael Rossetti, in a critique of Swinburne's Aesthetic compilation Poems and Ballads, stated that "the offences to decency are in the subjects selected — sometimes too faithfully classic, sometimes more or less modern or semi-abstract — and in the strength of the phrase which the writer insists upon using". Swinburne's Poems and Ballads "retains a capacity to shock readers" by means of its stark references to "a variety of perversities". As Rossetti stated, "the offences to decency are in the subjects selected," because "of positive grossness and foulness of expression there is none". Thus, the dense allusiveness of the language within this compilation allows for Swinburne's work to maintain a sense of ambiguity, while still expressing and developing the Victorian idea of the morally grotesque.

These grotesque "offences to decency" emerged from the strict nature of nineteenth century Victorian moral tendencies, of which "no century was more conscious," that some of the most daring artists of the Aesthetic movement exploited and explored. "Perhaps, too, this is the measure of its aesthetic achievement: great art is in its essence revolutionary and to revolt there must be something to rebel against" (Hare x). Within Poems and Ballads, Swinburne's controversial immoral tendencies reveal themselves most descriptively by his beautification of images and themes relating to the sexually perverse and grotesque that specifically question or deny traditional Victorian mores regarding gender roles and sexual practices — specifically forms of androgyny and hermaphrodeity. At the center of these perversions, 

Swinburne signals the body to be the locus of mingled sensations, fantasy, and reverie that may be "masculine" or "feminine" in connotation — or both. Since the hermaphrodite has both male and female sexual characteristics, possibilities of confusion and variety in sexual object are broached.

Thus, by means of the study of the layered meanings and connotations of the term androgyny, "or literal hermaphrodeity", and its appearances both literally and figuratively within Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, most specifically in "Fragoletta" and "Hermaphroditus," one can successfully trace Swinburne's sexual, philosophical and psychological explorations of the Victorian definition of the perverse and grotesque within this specific body of work.

However, to accomplish this, one must first clarify the various connotations and layered meanings of the term androgynous. Within this study, the term androgynous encompasses figurative and literal interpretations of the various forms and types of knowledge and ideas regarding human biology, gender-specific social associations and sexual practices that evolved and transformed during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Thus, androgynous will be utilized as a general term to connect the various intellectual trends that permeated cultural ideas and associations at the time of the conception and application of aesthetic artistic practices. Although not specifically connected with the sexually grotesque nature of Swinburne's work, two illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, an illustrative and literary artist also associated with the Aesthetes of the late nineteenth century, provide a compelling visual example of androgyny and hermaphrodeity that allows one to place these concepts within the timeframe of Swinburne's working era. Indicative or emblematic of the presence of the androgyne in nineteenth century Victorian society, Wendy Bashant describes these two illustrations of "a double-sexed being", Hermaphroditus and The Mirror of Love respectively, within her essay "Redressing Androgyny: Hermaphroditic Bodies in Victorian England":
The early picture is of a figure wrapped in cloth. . . . The adolescent breasts on the early picture seem misdrawn and downright awkward. The androgyne could be both sexes, or either, perhaps even neither: its flesh and sex seem irrelevant to the artist. The sex of the latter picture, however, is clear. Unlike the figure wrapped in cloth, this body defiantly open its arms, demanding that its audience examine its body.

Although both figures are double-sexed, the fact that the latter figure exhibits a clearer sexual differentiation portrays the shift in attitude and perception of gender roles from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and reveals as well the consequence of the scientific developments of the nineteenth that advocated for stronger sexual divisions based on biological findings. At the close of the eighteenth century, the Romantic philosophy of the unification of opposites, and the Saint-Simonion doctrine of societal reconstruction based on gender equality ("society should be androgynous") "seemed to suggest that the march towards unity was nearing an end". As Coleridge stated, "every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an opposite, as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union". Thus, the term androgynous encompass the revolutionary and figurative idea of asexuality (by means of equality) within traditional social and gender constructions in addition to the more literal interpretation of the term as relating to something that is physically asexual. The earlier Beardsley illustration, Hermaphroditus, pictorially illustrates this stance on societal androgyny through the distinct ambiguity of the seated figure. With tousled hair that bears no resemblance to the visual appearance of that of a man or a woman, as well as muscular arms, small breasts, slouched positioning and ambiguous facial features, the figure truly seems to be a physical manifestation of Coleridge's intellectually androgynous statement that "every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an opposite, as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union."

However, this emphasis on the mingling and unification of opposite forces never truly materialized in the revolutionary manner that such a statement seems to ordain, as the influx of scientific jargon in the nineteenth century revolving around the terms biology and sexuality implied a re-separation of opposites, and a maintenance of their respective contrasting spheres of existence. Thus, androgyny became the antithesis of accepted sexual, medical and social ideologies, and the term's association with the perverse and the grotesque within conventional realms of moral discourse can be viewed as more substantial as divisive language became even more prominent within the conversations revolving around gender roles and sexual practices.

In . . . the nineteenth century, words like biology and sexuality appeared. The former designated the physical organization — the separate parts and components that comprised life. The latter, sexuality, also suggested that the world was not returning towards a utopian One, a place where words that designated diversity were unnecessary. Instead the notion of sexuality — diversity in the human race — suggested that the world was composed of more distinctions.

These physical distinctions between man and woman translated into the very literal distinctions between the role of each, as Coleridge's idea of intellectual androgyny — "all opposition is a tendency to re-union" — became and remained insignificant in the realm of sexual and gender-specific politics. Associating the androgyny of society with the terror of the perverse and grotesque, the notion of an equally balanced being consisting of the unification of both male and female parts became a fabrication, as an androgyne "mixes masculine and feminine gender traits in such a way as to become a phallic woman. This monstrosity reflects in turn the monstrosity of . . . Terror itself". The idea of gendered norms became a socially structured means of enforcing morals, and any women "who would fain unsex themselves to make addled men" would in turn become an androgynes, figures of displaced and therefore perverted norms, "a thing as vile as addled eggs". Thus, the androgyne represents the grotesque: not just the literal combination of both sexes as defined in the physical form, but the figurative representation of the manly woman — the woman seeking sexual and gender equality (or sex with one of an equal gender).
Since the term androgynous can be interpreted as a characteristic of literal or figurative qualities related to the defiance of or the antithesis of traditional gendered norms in terms of physical characteristics (literal hermaphrodeity), and gender-specific relations (gender equality), the term can be applied to sexual orientations and practices as well, as desire based on same-sex relations violated conventional gender and sexual roles and therefore remained a Victorian moral perversity. "Several influential studies of Victorian sexual behaviours and attitudes towards sexualities assume that male-male desire, presumably leading to genital contact, is a pathological 'perversion' and further assume that the Victorians themselves thought it as such". As a homosexual was considered an androgyne, this additional moral perversion further stratified the roles regarding sexual relations and behaviors between men and woman, as the differences between each became more apparent and emphasized. Thus, the latter Beardsley illustration, The Mirror of Love erases any traces of ambiguity and allusiveness that seem to define the earlier Hermaphroditus, thus emphasizing the explicit differentiations between the sexes that gendered norms dictated. While still an androgyne, the sex of the figure in Mirror is clear, and as it opens it arms "defiantly . . . demanding that the audience examine its body" it becomes a symbol for the dual form and meaning of androgyny in Swinburnian Aesthetic literature and in conventional Victorian society respectively: "its sterile, super-sexual body . . . becomes both monster and god, both deformity and possibility". This androgyne, both discreet and unified and defiantly perverse, reveals itself in a variety of ways within Poems and Ballads, but these perverse and poetic "offences to decency" are most traceable specifically within "Fragoletta," "Hermaphroditus."

The dual beautification and affirmation of both bisexuality and androgyny/hermaphrodeity reveals itself within "Fragoletta," where the narrator "sees a being more beautiful than an ordinary woman", who exhibits obvious androgynous qualities:

O Love! What shall be said of thee?
The son of grief begot of joy?
Being sightless, wilt thou see?
Being sexless, wilt thou be
Maiden or boy?

Swinburne begins with a glorification and a curious exploration of the "sexless . . . maiden or boy," and continues to embark on the contradictions inherent in a topic dealing with the unification of two differing sexes: "son of grief begot of joy?", "being sightless wilt thou see?", "being sexless wilt thou be maiden or boy?". The narrator's innocently perverse interest in the beautiful sexless creature, that is his philosophy of androgyny as primordial sexlessness  remains apparent by means of Swinburne's utilization of the interrogative form, as the mysterious nature of the hermaphrodite seems to transcend the human realm with its subtle, perplexing beauty. As the narrator questions and perplexes over the presence of opposites in one being, "what fields have bred thee, or what groves concealed thee, O mysterious flower?". This curiosity is emblematic of the exploration of an object considered perverse or grotesque within the narrator's cultural surroundings, and as the work progresses, Swinburne seems to bask in the beautiful perversion of his own subject matter by means of his use of sexually-driven images and violent, even cannibalistic language. This progression begins with his introduction of the word blood — "ambiguous blood" — which he repeats throughout the work, his description of the physical unification of a hermaphroditic figure, and his description of the culmination of a forbidden sexual act:

I dreamed of strange lips yesterday
And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood
Was like a rose's — yea,
A rose when it lay
Within a bud.

By means of implying that hermaphroditic genitalia draws comparisons with "a rose when it lay within a bud," the allusiveness and subtleties of his language become apparent, as does the content of Rossetti's critique that "of positive grossness and foulness of expression there is none. The offences to decency are in the subjects selected". The progression of the perverse continues as Swinburne "dares the censor's scissors", by means of his offensive poetic discourse within "Fragoletta." Thus, he "creates poetic fantasies of male-male genital activity" that are concealed under the guise of his beautification of language and his utilization of natural imagery and other forms of diction typical to Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic love poetry — "kiss," "breathe," "sweet life," "sweet leaves," "desire," "delight," "eyesight," "fire," "day and night," . . . etc:

I dare not kiss it, let my lip
Press harder than an indrawn breathe,
And all the sweet life slip
Forth, and the sweet leaves drip,
Bloodlike, in death.
O sole desire of my delight!
O sole delight of my desire!
Mine eyelids and eyesight
Feed on thee day and night
Like lips on fire.

Initially, these two stanzas do not seem to imply homosexual erotic activity, however; "imagery of fellatio in 'Fragoletta'" remains allusively apparent within phrases such as "let my lip press harder than an indrawn breathe and all the sweet life slip forth, and the sweet leaves drip" and "feed on thee day and night, like lips on fire." The passionate nature of the eroticism of this forbidden androgynous creature, as well as that of the forbidden sexual act, culminates with Swinburne's gentle description of the pleasure of the encounter. As the narrator instructs, "lean back thy mouth of carven pearl, let thy mouth murmur like the dove's." The narrator continues with an expressed curiosity and sense of passion for the androgyne that implies the figurative unification of the two figures, the Coleridgeian idea that "all opposition is a tendency to re-union," as well as the literal sexual unification of the androgynous figure: "Thy barren bosom . . . turns my soul to thine and turns thy lip to mine, and mine it is." However, the work's progression to perversity abruptly relinquishes the chance of unification, as "the wholeness culminates, not in orgasm, but in subsumption". By means of Swinburne's violent and sadomasochist terminology that "ends the negated being," the "poet turns to vampire . . . and the super-creative, bisexual body becomes associated with cannibalism":

Nay, for thou shalt not rise;
Lie still as Love that dies
For the love of thee . . .
. . . And where my kiss hath fed
Thy flower-like blood leaps red
To the kissed place.

Thus, within "Fragoletta," the term androgynous remains applicable in terms of the obvious homoerotic content that threatened traditional sexual mores, the allusion to the figurative unification of being in an androgynous and ideal state, and the physical and literal androgyny and hermaphrodeity of the glorified figure, whose perfect unified beauty symbolically surpassed that of the divisive and gender-specified ideal of the narrator's imagined cultural surroundings.

"Hermaphroditus" presents the idea and physical manifestation of androgyny and hermaphrodeity in a similar way, however, the focus tends to associate these terms with blind love as well as symbolic unification. Within this work, Swinburne alludes to two other pieces of art and literature respectively: Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini's statue, Hermaphroditus, to which he dedicates the poem, and Ovid's tale in Metamorphosis, which he introduces at the end of the work. "The statue itself is desire incarnate. From one angle it looks like a seductive female nude. Other angles conceal the face while revealing the body parts. The statue could anachronistically be called alluring, uncastrated female flesh". "Hermaphroditus," while depicting the allure of the flesh of the androgyne as well as the underlying symbol of its unification, differs from "Fragoletta" in the fact that it also illustrates the final renunciation of desire typical of Pre-Raphaelite love poetry. "Throughout much Pre-Raphaelite love poetry, a dialectic of desire and renunciation is at work thematically. Whether a depicted passion is visceral or idealized, its object and therefore any fulfillment of desire are almost always unattainable" (Harrison). The work begins with a strong descriptive sense of desire for the androgyne, however, the presence of Swinburne's allusive and vague language foreshadows the ultimate desperate curse of blind love, the only kind of love that this androgynous being can cherish:

Lift thy lips, turn around, look back for love,
Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;
Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,
Save the long smile that they are wearied of.
Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,
Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;
Two loves at either blossom of thy breast . . .
Fire in thine eyes where thy lips suspire:
And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,
Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;
A strong desire begot on great despair,
A great despair cast out by strong desire.

Swinburne implies that one will grow weary from the perverse pleasure of blind love, and, negating his celebrated view of androgyny in "Fragoletta," he depicts and even possibly satirizes the conventional Victorian ideal that a hermaphrodite's inadequacies leave it tainted and grotesque, suitable only for the "blind love that comes by night." Using "love" interchangeably with the terms sex or gender, he instructs that one who loves this androgynous being, or even the being itself, should "choose of two loves and cleave unto the best," thus providing further indication of the tragic social and sexual inadequacies of the double-sexed figure both literally and figuratively. Swinburne further emphasizes the inevitable "despair" that awaits the lover of an androgyne: "And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair, two things turn all his life and blood to fire; a strong desire begot on great despair." However, the tragedy and suffering of this type of love remain so blind that the na•ve lover of the androgyne will perish by means of his desire, thus remaining oblivious to the desperation of his enthralled state; thus, "a great despair cast out by strong desire." Discussing the ways in which Love will abandon the androgyne, Swinburne continues this poetic discourse on the rejection, exploration and desperation of the grotesque in the following sonnet,:

Love made himself of flesh that perisheth
A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;
But on one side sat a man like death,
And on the other a woman sat like sin.
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breathe
Love turned himself and would not enter in.

Personifying love, Swinburne reveals the perversity of the androgyne, the figure composed of the body of a "man like death" and a "woman like sin." Thus, as Bashant states,
the statue becomes, not a balanced being of Greek perfection, but rather female beauty with masculine parts grafted onto it. The hermaphrodite's double body parts, which, when separate, appeal to either male and female desire, together, appeal to neither. Only blind love seems satisfied.
This idea relates to the forms of androgyny present within the interpretation of homosexual desire as displayed within "Fragoletta," which represents another Victorian connotation of the grotesque in terms of the violation or rather rebuttal of conventional gender mores. Thus, when the sexually separated androgyne appeals to both "male and female desire," or when the sexually unified androgynous figure also appeals to both realms of desire, this crossing of gendered norms also represents a form of androgyny and or perversity. The following sonnet in "Hermaphroditus" alludes to this idea, as Swinburne questions the fate of the hermaphroditic figure and its relation to and association with Love:

Love stands upon thy left and thy right,
Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise
Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,
Or make thee woman for a man's delight.
To what strange end hath some strange god made fair
The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?

Ending the final part of the sonnet with an allusion to hermaphroditic genitalia similar to that described in "Fragoletta" — "the double blossom of two fruitless flowers" — Swinburne ends "Hermaphroditus" with the final allusion to Metamorphosis:

Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise
Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
And all thy boy's breathe softened into sighs
But Love being blind, how should he know of this?

This final sestet describes the curse of hermaphroditism, "tied to effiminancy and impotency," beset upon all men who feel "the water's kiss" of Salmacis's pool. As Ovid's myth states that Hermaphroditus willed that all men who bathed in Salmacis's pool would be cursed by the water's ability to transform them into half-men, when the narrator states that "I saw what swift wise beneath the woman's and the water's kiss thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis . . . and all thy boy's breathe softened into sighs" "he the viewer, saw breaths turn into sighs. With Ovid's story controlling the events of the poem, the sighs cannot be sighs of pleasure, but rather of resignation, as the 'sweet' turns from an ideal image to unmanly imperfections". Thus, the multiple meanings and layered connotations of the word androgynous within Swinburne's work becomes apparent, as the term incorporates various interpretations of the act of side-stepping traditional conventions regarding gender and sexuality, both literally and figuratively. Thus, the androgyne, with "its sterile, super-sexual body . . . becomes both monster and god, both deformity and possibility" within then avant-garde psychology of the Victorian Aesthete.

Thus, by means of the study of the layered meanings and connotations of the term androgynous, "or literal hermaphrodeity", and its appearances both literally and figuratively within Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, most specifically in "Fragoletta" and "Hermaphroditus," one is able to successfully trace Swinburne's sexual, philosophical and psychological explorations of the Victorian definition of the perverse and grotesque. This utilization of grotesque imagery and indecent subject matter remains typical of Victorian Aesthetes, as does the "corollary use of allusion almost entirely for emphasis or effect — as opposed to more traditional allusions both for effect and also to locate a work or statement ideologically". It can be inferred that Swinburne's affinity for perverted or grotesque subject matter fits into this definition of the "corollary use of allusion," as the "fascination which sexual ambiguity held for Swinburne . . . seems beyond that of one who was consciously homosexual. He stands outside that". Thus, his Baudelairien use of perverse and androgynous imagery and subject matter remains a purposeful attempt towards certain aesthetic literary affects. "Swinburne, then classes himself among those who believe 'that the poet, properly to develop his poetic faculty, must be an intellectual hermaphrodite, to whom the very facts of the day and night are lost in a whirl of aesthetic terminology," as he himself affirmed, "great poets are bisexual; male and female at once". One can even infer that this stance on intellectual androgyny transfers to an ideology that revolves around the idea of the "perfect spiritual hermaphrodite," as Swinburne "imagined a primordial sexlessness in man" (Landow), an imagination similar to the Coleridgean idea that "all opposition is a tendency to re-union." Thus, the presence of the androgyne within Swinburne's work not only relates to his "investigations of sexuality" and conventional ideas regarding gender mores and moral and immoral associations, but to the idea of the "eternal androgyne," the perfect poetic human being that is "male and female . . . without the division of flesh". 

Squonk by Genesis from the album Trick of the Tail 1976

Mike Rutherford was inspired by a book of folklore. He has confirmed this in interviews. It even came up in Q Magazine in November 1994 when a reader wrote in about this song and Steely Dan's "Any Major Dude Will Tell You". They contacted the man himself, and the book is believed to be Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by William T Cox.


Some of you may be surprised to learn that the "Squonk" was not an invention of these English public school boys; nor were they even the first bunch of lads to reference the squonk in a pop song! No, that honor probably goes to Donald Fagen and his friend Walter Becker, who as Steely Dan wrote the song "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" for their 1974 album Pretzel Logic. In this song:


"Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine!
The people on the street have all seen better times."


This is in fact the only mention of the squonk in the one song in the whole Steely Dan oeuvre. Donald Fagen clearly assumed that his listening audience knew enough about the squonk to not need any explanation of its origin--he makes a mere passing reference to the creature and moves on, never looking back.


Some squonk background (from BBC's h2g2 site):


The squonk is a mythical creature and, as such, its exact origin is unclear. However, the creature was well known by the late 1800s in Pennsylvania. Suffice to say that Pennsylvania had forests in which piles of lumberjacks were crawling around, and in that kind of situation it won't be long before you come up with legends of some kind of mythic creature who lives in those forests. Right? Right. In this case, the creature was the squonk (scientific name Lacrimacorpus dissolvens), and boy, was he an ugly fella. All accounts describe the race of squonks as very shy, due to their extreme ugliness--an ugliness which seems to consist mainly in unfortunate skin ailments. They are covered in warts and moles and such, and have very baggy skin; and, rather than keeping a stiff upper lip about it and going around saying that beauty is what you've got on the inside and all that, they rather take the opposite course and spend all their days weeping over the unfortunate physiognomy which nature has seen fit to hand them. Since they hate their appearance so much, they don't want anyone else seeing them--certainly not humans, who are presumably all--even on their worst days--much prettier than even the prettiest squonk.


Their skin being so nasty, and generally being the source of their ugliness, one would think that they would be a very unwanted class of creature and that, rather than having a lot of work keeping away from his fellow beings, the squonk should have no problem shunning any lumberjack who happened to stumble near (seeing as how most people will not want to look at something ugly unless they absolutely have to). But in fact (as the more popular legend about the squonk claims) the very skin which makes the squonk so nasty is what also makes him so valuable, and consequently makes people very keen on meeting him. That's right, the squonk pelt--presumably due entirely to its rarity--will pull in a king's ransom, so hunters (who are always ready to kill something that is so rare as to be nearly extinct) are always on the lookout for squonks. Thus the famous JP Wentling (or Wentley), was perhaps who Mike Rutherford was thinking of when he wrote "Squonk." For, just like the lyrics of the song, Wentling was able to track the squonk by the trail of tears it left on the ground during the night of a full moon, and he tricked the poor creature by imitating its piteous cry and drawing it near enough to toss it in a sack. Here we may assume that squonks attract each other in their misery, which is nice; it's comforting to imagine that, even if you are incredibly ugly, you have the chance of finding someone else who is at least as ugly as you are--surely two squonks will have enough in common to be able to hammer out some kind of a friendship, providing that so many of the species exist and are in close enough proximity of each other to enable them to eventually meet. They at least seem to have the urge to commiserate with each other, as the success of Wentling's trick plainly shows.


Anyways, Wentling thought he had it made--that he could drop the whole tannin-trading business and settle down in a solid gold house and eat off of silver platters every day, feasting off the riches of his rare (possibly unique) squonk pelt--until he eventually opened his sack (after having carried the wailing squonk at least part of the way home, possibly to a tumbledown lumberjack's shack--like the kind of place the tin woodsman lived in in The Wizard of Oz) and found nothing inside it but a pool of bubbles and tears. For this is the squonk's one special trait apart from its ugliness, its only defensive measure: it can dissolve into a liquid by-product of its own misery hence the scientific name.


It is this alluring story which has caused several authors producing compendiums of myths and folklore and beasts to include the squonk in their works, and it is these literary works which have informed and inspired the works of our beloved pop artists. At least those pop artists of the seventies, who were a tad more concerned with interesting references like this than the musicians of other decades of the twentieth century. (For those of you interested, authors who have discussed the squonk include William Cox, Jorge Luis Borges, and one Carey Miller; unfortunately all of their squonk-related books are out of print, except perhaps that of Borges.) Even present artists are intrigued by the squonk: hence the Squonk Opera, a group of artists and performers who had/have a multimedia show on Broadway--though probably very little of it refers to the ugly blighter for which they have named themselves. Squonk Opera's web site is usually amongst the first hits that comes up if you search for "squonk" on a search-engine.


There could be some interesting comparisons made with Peter Gabriel's Slippermen...