“The Anglo-Saxons” may be one of the “funny” ones, but it’s gained a lot of character even beyond that.

Track: “The Anglo-Saxons”
Album: Ghana (1999)

In the past 25 years or so, John Darnielle has played “The Anglo-Saxons” just a few times. I’m fascinated by songs like this, not just in their rarity, but in the fact that they exist at all. In Portland in 2017 he played it and commented on the fact that it’s largely inaccurate as a history and ends with a big explosion the way all old Mountain Goats songs end. This is just one of those songs from some of those days and that may or may not be all you need to know.

It was originally released as part of a compilation called Basement Tapes, a set of live recordings that the radio station KSPC put out in 1995. You can buy one used for about twenty-five bucks. Mountain Goats fans will know it from Ghana a few years later and will appreciate the young John Darnielle vocals and the high pitch. It’s one of the “funny” ones like “Going to Maine” or “The Monkey Song” but it’s also a history, like “Song for Cleomenes.”

The rhymes are tight and the delivery suggests a sort of morning cartoon about this ancient group of people. You can imagine this coming on after The Flintstones. John Darnielle contains multitudes, and it’s great that the same guy who ended an album with “In Corolla” once wrote a funny story about some facts about the people who lived in England before the English did.