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Long forgotten songs returning.

Cherrybomb

Cherrybomb

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Aug 26, 2009
Messages
1,321
Location
Sitting on the roof, at dusk.
Hi all!

All day today I've had this song stuck in my head:
Build a bonfire, build a bonfire,
Put the teachers on the top,
Put the prefects in the middle,
And burn the blooming lot.

I've not heard of or thought of that song since I was probably about 10 or 11. Whys it popped up in my head today I wonder?!

Anyone else get this with long forgotten songs?
 
Is that sung to the tune of Clementine?
Yes, the song in my head a few days ago was something that i cant quite remember now, i just remember that it was old and i didnt know where the heck it had come from. I figure it may have come from the radio, not the whole song, maybe a fragment of a tune, a note, and it triggered it.
 
On top of Old Smokey, all covered in blood
Lay my old teacher, shot with a .22 slug

I shot her with courage, I shot her with pride
I couldn't really miss her, she was 20 foot wide

I went to her funeral, I went to her grave
People threw flowers, I threw a grenade

A young copper did stop me, and ask me my name
So I gave him me answer, with a bicycle chain

:D
 
Ten sticks of dynamite standing on a wall
Ten sticks of dynamite standing on a wall
And if one stick of dynamite should accidentally fall
They'll be no sticks of dynamite and no bloody wall
 
"Green grow the rashes, O
Green grow the rashes, O
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent among the lasses, O"

I haven't thought about this song in 25 years.

I'd repeat another one I heard in my youth, but I don't want to be put on some "watch" list somewhere.
 
Isn't it green grow the rushes O, like bulrushes?

I remember "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy", which if you say it out loud sounds weirdly like a made-up language.
 
In Moscow, In the Kremlin,
In the Fall of 39,
Sat a Russian and A Prussian,
Working out The Party Line.

To the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
 
GNC said:
I remember "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy", which if you say it out loud sounds weirdly like a made-up language.
Click to expand...

Drake, Hoffman and Livingston, USA 1943. Apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairzy_Doats
"Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, Wooden shoe!"
"If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy,
A kid will eat ivy too, wouldn't you?"
Allegedly had it's origins in the English nursery rhyme:

"Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters." (Cows eat wheat and sows eat wheat and little sharks eat oysters.)
 
cherrybomb said:
Hi all!

All day today I've had this song stuck in my head:
Build a bonfire, build a bonfire,
Put the teachers on the top,
Put the prefects in the middle,
And burn the blooming lot.

I've not heard of or thought of that song since I was probably about 10 or 11. Whys it popped up in my head today I wonder?!

Anyone else get this with long forgotten songs?
Click to expand...

Does it happen to be the end of the school term where you live? It is here, and that's the same kind of song kids tend to sing at the end of the school year (when the teachers can no longer punish them for it. :p) Perhaps it's the time of year that brought it to mind?

We would sing the On Top of Old Smokey one that OWB quoted (minus the final verse, which must be strictly British, by the wording) We'd also sing a similar school destruction one to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

I get old songs I'd thought I'd forgotten popping into my head all the time, though it's usually random pop songs. Just yesterday the song Electric Blue by Icehouse popped into my head unbidden. it was popular for about a week back in 1988 and and I didn't even like it back then. :eek:
 
Ulalume said:
Just yesterday the song Electric Blue by Icehouse popped into my head unbidden. it was popular for about a week back in 1988 and and I didn't even like it back then. :eek:
Click to expand...

I loved that song as a kid. As an adult (when I finally tracked it down), the video is pure 80's madness.

I mean, c'mon...keytar, hexagonal drums, big hair, dude playing a sax solo at night on a roof, oh, and an epic mullet...and at least on instance of bright red leather.
 
The other day I experienced an irrational desire to sing Benny Hill's Ernie - the Fastest Milkman in the West. Then I realised I'd forgotten all the lyrics. I think that was triggered by someone mentioning milkmen on the radio.
 
graylien said:
The other day I experienced an irrational desire to sing Benny Hill's Ernie - the Fastest Milkman in the West. Then I realised I'd forgotten all the lyrics. I think that was triggered by someone mentioning milkmen on the radio.
Click to expand...

What a great novelty record that is, an near-lost art in the UK. Those lyrics are superb.
 
rynner2 said:
A variation on Old Smokey:

"On top of spaghetti
All covered in cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table
And onto the floor
And then my poor meatball
Rolled out of the door!"

:p
Click to expand...

It went into the garden
And under a bush
Then my poor meatball
Was nothing but mush.
 
Does anyone here know the words to Muff Divers in the Sky?

I remember drunk 'Carnegie' sports students singing that on the night bus back from the college bar.

The only bit I remember went -

He received her letter when he was having tea,
And overturned the table with his penis, four foot three!

There are various allusions to said letter in it which I presume has the obvious double meaning.
 
OneWingedBird said:
Alas, the requested url cannot be found on that server!
Click to expand...

The intra-page links are screwed up on that single large listing page.

Simply scroll down to find the given song ...
 
C'mon, there must be another verse to the meatball song!
 
GNC said:
I remember "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy", which if you say it out loud sounds weirdly like a made-up language.
Click to expand...

My Grandmother used to sing that to me when I was a kid. Seeing those words almost brought a tear to my eye.
 
Wonderful memories--these are actually schoolyard folksongs:
Mary had a steamboat
the steamboat had a bell
Mary went to Heaven
the steamboat went to
Hell
-o Operater
Give me number nine
If there is no answer
I'll kick your big
Behind the 'fridgerater
There was some broken glass
Little Mary sat on it and cut her Little
Ass-k me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
The cows are are in the pasture
making chocolate pies.
 
Hah, I remember that one. For us, it was "Miss Suzie", and the end was a little different, but it does take me back.

I talked my 7th grade art teacher into letting me write down all the lyrics from this one she told us:

Two Irishmen, two Irishmen,
a diggin' in a ditch.
One called the other
a dirty son-of-a-
Peter Murphy had a dog,
and a good dog was he.
He took him to a lady-friend
To keep her company.
She fed him up, she fed him down,
She taught him how to jump.
He jumped up her petticoat
And bit her on the-
Country-boys, country-boys,
Sittin' on a rock.
A bumble bee came along
and stung one on the cock-
-tails, ginger-ale,
Fifty cents a glass.
If you don't like it,
You can kiss my big fat as-
-k me no more questions,
Tell me no more lies,
If you're ever hit
with a bucket of shit,
Just remember to close your eyes.
 
Something at work - I'm not sure what - sets me off singing the lively calypso 'Sammy Dead-o' which I was taught at school.

A no tief Sammy teif mek dem kill him,
A no lie Sammy lie mek him dead oh,
But a grudgeful dem grudgeful kill Sammy,
But a grudgeful dem grudgeful kill Sammy,

Sammy plant piece a corn dung a gully
An it bear till it kill poor Sammy.
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead oh,
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead oh,

Neighbour kyaan bear fe see neighbour flourish,
Neighbour kyaan bear fe see neighbour flourish,
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead oh,

Sammy gone dung a hell fe shoot blackbud,
A no lie Sammy lie mek him go deh,
But a grudgeful dem grudgeful kill Sammy,
But a grudgeful dem grudgeful kill Sammy

In our songbook it said 'nayga', not 'neighbour', representing a then-common term for a person of colour.
We wouldn't be singing that now!

There's also Mango Walk which I now find is a Caribbean nursery rhyme.

'Mango walk' means mango-scrumping and 'number eleven' is a variety of mango. I learned that from the singing book at school!
 
Interesting you should say that, Gerda, because that's exactly how I convinced the art teacher to let me write that song down.

I was recording all kinds of things like that as a sort of treatise on "schoolyard folklore".
 
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