Percival Polonius and his Red Balloon

= Background = Often a song sung for children, this tale of an egomaniac getting his just deserts is both cautionary and humorous. Almost everyone has heard it at some point or another, and most fondly remember it from their own youngest days. Lyrics by Gunnar Matheson

= Lyrics = A bitter debate there waged

On the height of the scientist stage

At the College of Arms at Olden Waterloo

"Sir Percival, you're mad!

And thought of by most as a cad

And there's none who'll back what you are set to do!"

Polonius was a Lord

Of the House of Jennet-Accord

And not a one for being set on his tail

"I've said what I'm about,

and it'll do no good to shout

For around the world my new balloon will sail!"

"But coal could not be had

Not for "Polonius the Mad"

And so his big balloon just sat on the lawn

He huffed and shouted and fumed,

"You stupid useless balloon!

If I had some heat in a minute I would be gone!"

He ranted and he raved

And the ears of none were saved

From the never-ending tirade, even in sleep!

So his wife, at the end of wits,

said "I've enough of this!"

And as he slept she went and muzzled the creep.

She took hand of the balloon

And stuffed his mouth full true

And then turned over to slumber once again.

But as his heat rushed out,

with his each and every shout

The balloon began to swell into its frame.

When dawn opened his eyes

He was duly surprised

And floating well above old Waterloo

The Lord he yelled and flailed,

but it was to no avail

And the wind it took him up into the blue.

All that day and night

Our dear Lord was a kite

With no basket but himself depending down

The clouds beneath his feet,

and the sky all he could see

And not a single glimpse of sacred ground.

His fuming reached new heights

In his anger and affright

Until he realized what he had done

His own heat kept him high,

perched aloft amid the sky

And none to blame but he the only one.

It took full twenty week

'Til Polonius was meek

Enough to harness his own inner fire

And as he cooled, so too,

did the often-cursed balloon

But in the end he was proven not a liar.

For as he'd floated on

Through the verses of this song

He'd traveled with the jetstream high above

So around the world he went,

'til his froth was fully spent

And he landed once more in the home he loved.

So Polonius went down

As the histories have found

As a storied legend to this very day.

And the moral clearly is,

when one feels the need to hiss...

perhaps 'tis best if vented properlay.