Talking of authentic recordings, here’s the classic 1932 version of Pique-nique by Edouard Ibert (“Call me Ted”) (cf. Authorship):
With Val Rosing’s wonderful plummy voice, and great original, period instrumentation—menacing brass and xylophone, and zany woodblocks, like Cantonese jazz, I may be drawn to it by its heavy use of the pentatonic scale, but the final chorus is a definitive proclamation of those sober values that Made the British Empire “Great”, after the sinister bacchanalian debauchery of the sylvan outing…
See them gaily gad about
They love to play and shout
They never have any cares
At six o’clock their mummies and daddies will take them home to bed
Because they’re tired little teddy bears.
Cf. the reflections of Alan Bennett. And the pique-nique may remind us of Five go mad in Dorset, with lashings of ginger beer…
On a pedantic note, it’s Teddy bears’ picnic, with the apostrophe belonging after bears!
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