At first I just thought of this as a jaunty traditional song about a whaling ship's adventure that was made especially amusing because the whale is referred to archaically as a whalefish, but there are definitely sinister undertones here:
The losing of those five jolly men,
It grieved the captain sore,
But the losing of that fine whalefish
Now it grieved him ten times more
It comments on how those in authority are often so ruthlessly obsessed with ego-boosting goals that they scarcely care if there are human casualties along the way to accomplishing them.
At first I just thought of this as a jaunty traditional song about a whaling ship's adventure that was made especially amusing because the whale is referred to archaically as a whalefish, but there are definitely sinister undertones here:
The losing of those five jolly men, It grieved the captain sore, But the losing of that fine whalefish Now it grieved him ten times more
It comments on how those in authority are often so ruthlessly obsessed with ego-boosting goals that they scarcely care if there are human casualties along the way to accomplishing them.