I've been a-courting Mary-Jane

[venta]

So, an important point, I'm sure you'll agree.

Please fill in what, if anything, you would sing/shout between verse and chorus:

(Edit: sorry, polls play merry hell with formatting and can't be edited after the fact.)

[Poll #1304903]

I think I learned this song from my parents. They sang an extra line in between the verse and chorus, but not one between the chorus and the verse.

Years later, singing this round a campfire with the Scouts, I learned a new set of fill-in lines. These are now the ones I'd sing without thinking (and the ones I filled in on the poll[*]). I thought no more about it, and decided it was another strange thing my parents had made up to fool me.

Recently (at oxfordgirl and mejoff's wedding, no less) someone started singing On Ilkley Moor and I was quite astonised to hear libellum yelling[**] something quite different in between the verse and the chorus.

I was talking to someone else recently, who came up with a third set[***] (which I have annoyingly now forgotten) and it got me wondering. How many variants are there ? Are they geographically distributed ? If you have friends who like a bit of a sing and might know On Ilkley Moor, send 'em along here to fill this poll in and I'll be most grateful.

I'm sure that there will be a moral to this tale.

[*] By which, of course, I mean will have filled in, since at the time of writing the poll doesn't yet exist.
[**] That's a bit unkind. It was quite a melodious noise. Not quite singing, though, so let's go with yelling.
[***] Though, interestingly, despite knowing the song she didn't know that the words to While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks fit really well to the tune. If you didn't know this either, give it a try. While glory shone around, while glory shone around, while glo-ry shone a-round.

Comments

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I'm very sad, because this is a subject I'm fond of too, and *I can't remember*. I think there was something about trousers.

OK, looking at the results so far, 'without tha trousers' sounds pretty close to what my head wants. And I remember 'where the ducks play football', but think I must have heard it *from* elethiomel, back in the day.

The ECWS was always good for this kind of thing - endless variations on popular songs. I particularly loved all the versions of Green Grow the Rushes-O. There was a communist version that I loved (and which would scandalise the Americans, I must wheel it out - they're entirely convinced that communism is inherently, unconscionably evil, and that anarchism involves blowing them up. Silly sods. And there was a gibberish version involving codwangles and bogling forks. One is the grunge upon my splod, masking my codwangle.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

OK, hang on, my brain is throwing stuff at me again. Something like 'up the dustman's trousers', or 'up the milkman's trousers', or something. And that comes with a feeling that I got it from Lincoln College rugby team. And I'm not sure they were singing about Ilkley Moor.

There's a Wikipedia article on the subject, but it's not very helpful.

My version of Green Grow... doesn't even have numbers

[venta.livejournal.com]

Bacon baked in the baby's bath,
And Eno's every morning.
Marg, Marg-a-rine!
Beans, beans in little round tins, sauce on top and in betweens.
Jam is jam, and always plum, and ever more shall be so.