P. S. Remesh Chandran
2018
‘Ten Green Bottles Hanging On The Wall’ is a very old English song for teaching little children the art of counting as well as English pronunciation and music. Listening to the lines the child learns the three without the assistance of a teacher. The song has had so many variations and so many tunes during the past centuries, its origin believed to be around the fourteenth century. People who are reluctant to use the word ‘hanging’ which hints death repeatedly in the song lest unnecessary ideas and notions shall enter the minds of little children frequently have substituted that word with other words like ‘sitting, standing, and the like. But how could a bottle standing or sitting on a wall instead of hanging by a thread on the wall accidentally fall, which argument is not plausible. ‘Ten Green Bottles Hanging On The Wall’ and ‘Row Row Row The Boat’ were my cradle songs and I learned their lyrics and tune well in childhood. I was taught by my father Late. N. Sahadevan, B.A., B.T., C.T.E., who worked as a High School English Teacher in my home village. He was my Class Teacher and English Teacher also in the Tenth Standard in S. K. V. High School, Nanniyode. My mother, late Padmakshy Sahadevan, also taught me the same songs in the same tune, who was incidentally one of his students. Before joining my local High School, he had served a few years in Singapore, Malaysia and other countries for a British cultural firm and then returned and got himself trained by the British Council of India at the Regional Institute of English, Bangalore. Therefore it is not certain where he got this tune from. I am re-creating this tune from memory. YouTube release link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UTIQrqNUIg
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