Hans Riegel of Bonn

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a copper kettle, a wooden spoon, a workshop door)
HA-RI-BO. Three syllables. Three answers.

[Verse 1]
Nineteen twenty, in a laundry-room in Bonn,
a confectioner named Hans Riegel with a sack of sugar,
a copper kettle, a marble slab, and a bicycle
that his wife rode round the city making the deliveries.
That's the entire company. One kettle and one bike.
And two years later he made a bear, and the bear went everywhere.

[Chorus]
HA from Hans! RI from Riegel! BO from Bonn!
His first name, his last name, and the city he was born in!
Three pieces of one man chopped up and glued together
into a word that children say who'll never know he lived!
Hans Riegel of Bonn. That's the whole word.
You've been saying his address this entire time.

[Verse 2]
The Tanzbär — the dancing bear — nineteen twenty-two,
modelled on the real bears that they'd parade at German fairs,
which is a grimmer image than the sweet suggests, admittedly,
a chained bear made into a sweet made into a friend.
And it worked. God, it worked. It's still working now.
A hundred years of a shape a man cut out by hand.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And here is what I like about this one above the others:
he didn't hide. He didn't anglicise or abbreviate to hide.
He put his name, his surname and his hometown in the tin
and simply trusted that the shortening would be affectionate.
It was. It is. Nobody says it unkindly.
They just say it without knowing. Which is nearly the same as kindly.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the bicycle bell, going up the street)
His wife rode the bicycle.
Somebody should write that down. His wife rode the bicycle.