Thunder Enlightening

The weather girl said there may be thunderstorms the other night. At 10.45pm. after I'd watched the news, I suddenly realised there was a lot of stuff on the lawn, I persuaded Bob to come outside with me and pull everything into the summerhouse, and put down the big parasol. There was no thunder that night at all. Typical...

Yesterday morning Rosie and I were waiting for breakfast [Grandad Bob cooking the pancakes] and somehow we started talking about circuses. "What is the name of that tune they always play at the circus" I said. In the kitchen Bob started singing 🎵"DumDum Diddle Iddle, DumDum Diddle Iddle..."🎵 and Rosie said "That's the Dumbo Tune" and I said "I think it's older than that"

As we sat round after breakfast, I looked it up and announced to the family "The tune was written by Julius Fučik, a Czech composer, in 1897. He wrote lots of music for military bands, and was fascinated by the Roman Empire. He called this piece the March of The Gladiators. It quickly became popular with marching bands, and was adopted by many circuses as the piece played for the arrival of the clowns.. In the States it was renamed Thunder and Blazes". "They stole his thunder" said Bob "I wonder where that phrase comes from?"

"I know that!" piped up Rosie "It's an idiom. There was a man who wrote plays, and one play had a storm in it. He built a thunder machine with wooden balls banging on a sheet of iron. The thunder was really good, but the play was rubbish, so they stopped performing it, and put on "Macbeth" instead. Then the man went back to the theatre to see a performance and during the storm scene, he realised they were making the noises using his machine. He was so angry he stood up and shouted, 'You won't perform my play, but you have stolen my thunder!'

Bob and I sat amazed at this information. I checked online, she was absolutely right in every detail - this was playwright John Dennis in 1709, and his failed play was called Appius and Virginia.[I learned it on a podcast, Grandma] So before 9am on a Monday morning, I learned

~the proper name of the 'circus tune'

~the alternative name in the USA

~and the origin of a popular idiom.

And now you know it too!