A song fragment for two voices
by Gary Lincoff and Tina Gilliam-Davies
with an assist from Gilbert and Sullivan

First Voice : The amateur mycologist

I am the very model of an amateur mycologist
And often tend to think myself a good agaricologist.
I know mushrooms that are good for you and others that are magical,
And how to tell the good from bad and bad from worse and tragical.
I'm very well acquainted too with matters microscopical;
I understand cystidia, both pleuro and dermatical.
In mushroom cultivation, too, I claim as well to know my share,
With many secret formulae for growing mushrooms in thin air.

I'm very good at doing taxonomical analysis.
I know the scientific names of mushrooms that are poisonous.
In short, if you're in need of a good agaricologist,
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist.

I know the names and dates of all our eminent mycologists
And who discovered who with whom and who got slapped and who got kissed,
And who knows Latin well enough to know the latest idiom,
And the idiots who can't even tell their ascus from basidium.
I know who stole what from whom and who once fixed a club election,
Who stomps on others' mushroom finds and who once ate a type collection.
All these things and more I know, and now of mushroomers I sing
Of the ins and outs and ups and downs and goings on in fairy rings.

I know who'd named what and who has had mushrooms named after them,
And who the mushroom splitters are and their every evil strategem.
In short, if you're in need of a good agaricologist
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist.

Second Voice : The professional mycologist

I am the very model of a good agaricologist.
It's never said I'm only just a classical taxonomist.
I've every trick of culture work and numerical taxonomy
And all my grants have demonstrated value to the economy.
I know each bit of literature from the present back to Adam's time.
In field determinations I am something of a paradigm.
As editor, I catch mistakes and never make my colleagues frown.
When lecturing, I never find my slides are put in upside down.

I write prodigious volumes and make sure that every comma's there.
I'm good at finding funding when there's never any funding there.
In short, if you're in need of a good agaricologist,
I am the very model of a professional mycologist.

---

Give me that old time mycology / Monadnock club NEMF '04

Give me that old time mycology
Give me that old time mycology
Give me that old time mycology
It's good enough for me.

We do not care about sequencing
Or those funny things
Just want those fairy rings
It's good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology....

Let us go hunt for Boletus
It's the mushroom that will feed us
Unless the beetles beat us
It's good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology....

I like that witches' butter
Doesn't come from udders
The Latin makes me sputter
It's good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology...

Pictus or spraguei?
Either will make me cry
It will change before we die
It's good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology...

Don't eat huronensis
For Ursula lost her senses              [note: Ursula Pohl got sick after eating Boletus huronensis]
Found her heaving over fences
Not good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology...

Let us worship with the druids
Drink strange fermented fluids
Run naked through the woods
It's good enough for me.

Give me that old time mycology...