Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old
Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile
1915
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile,
smile, smile.
While you've a lucifer * to light your fag +
smile, boys, thats the style.
What's the use in worrying?
It never was worthwhile,
so pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile.
* Lucifer - that's a phosphorus friction match, not the devil
+ fag - a cigarette
It is interesting, incidentally, that ancients
were not aware that the evening and morning stars were the same heavenly body
so they had different names for them: in Greek, "Hesperos" and "Phosphoros"
respectively and in Latin "Hesperus" (occasionally "Phosphorus") and "Lucifer."
"Phosphoros" and "Lucifer" both mean "light bearing." "Hesperus" comes ultimately
from the Indo-European word "wesperos" meaning "western" since the evening
star is always seen in the western sky. In the Roman Catholic liturgy, the
sixth of the seven canonical hours--which takes place in the evening--is called
Vespers, a word deriving from Hesperus. The (only) biblical reference to
Lucifer: "How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of the morning."
Isaiah xiv. 12 (KJV). The frequent use of the name "Lucifer" for the devil
is a little odd and may trace to a misinterpretation of this quotation. A
better name, dating to the Old Testament, is "Satan" [cf. Job i., ii. and
Psalms cix. 9 (KJV)]. However Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton inter
alia all use the name "Lucifer" to represent God's fallen angel. The Book
of Common Prayer, written at about the time of Marlowe, uses "Satan" or simply
"the devil" as does the King James version of the bible, published some 50
years later. Jesus: "Get thee behind me, Satan" [Matthew xii. 26 and Mark
viii. 23 (to Peter) and Luke iv. 8 (to the devil).] Then phosphorus match
invented in the middle 1800's (they are referred to by Huck Finn as "new-fangled")
were called "lucifers" well into the 20th century. A popular World War I song
had the lyrics "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile,
smile. While you've a lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that's the style."
("Fag" was slang for "cigarette" in those days.)
