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

[venta.livejournal.com]

OK, motodraconis, you got your own back... your words just made me giggle out loud :) Did you learn your version from George Melly !?

[mrph.livejournal.com]

It turned up in a Warren Ellis comic (Gravel) a couple of months back, although without having it to hand I couldn't say quite which lyrics were used...

I may have to check. (Trying to point warren_ellis himself at the poll seems a bit cheeky :)

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I just made them up. It seemed the sort of thing one sings in folk songs.

I happen to like folk songs, but I've never heard that 'un.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

As a second generation Yorkshire emigrant, I only know of this song because of my mother telling me to wear my woolly hat in winter so I didn't "get stuck out on Ilkley Moor baht'at", seemingly assuming that I had absorbed its cultural context during gestation. I therefore have this feeling like I ought to know what you're talking about and am a bit rubbish for not doing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If you do happen across and could check that'd be great, but no worries if not. I don't expect the great man himself to come and answer ;)

(Y'know, for any well-known comic-book author I always try and shoe-horn them into a rhyming couplet. Warren Ellis, likes his trellis. I blame PWEI.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

!
Good heavens.

During the conversaion with the third-person (mentioned above) it was revealed that ChrisC (my other half) didn't know the song. I was boggled to find one person who didn't know the song, but now two!

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

Worth mentioning that oxfordgirl blames you for the 'right up saint cyril' insert she is now incapable of completing the Wild Rover without.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Also, she used to sing "While shepherds washed their socks by night all seated on the ground, the angel of the lord came down and threw them all around" while we were hanging up washing. I later found this to be the incorrect lyrics during school carol singing. See also "We three kings of orient are, one in a taxi one in a car".

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

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.

I did know this, and have been known to demonstrate. Also, you can sing Pinball Wizard to the tune of The White Cockade (the one that starts 'Oh yes me love is listed' and not the other song called The White Cockade).

Other shouting-outs - various ones for The Wild Rover - including 'balls to the Pope' and 'right up yer arse'.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh no, are you a whole 3rd person who doesn't know it ? This calls for serious cultural re-alignment on my part. I assume everyone not only knows it but is bored to death with hearing it.

I'm too scared to google for something that would reveal the tune, but an executive summary would be that someone goes on a cold moor without a hat, bad shit ensues. If you do not wish bad shit to ensue, wear a hat.

[venta.livejournal.com]

!?

Rather unfair of her, since I've never heard that in my life!

Apart from a tendency to wander off into singing The Wild Pervert instead, I sing nothing in that song that isn't strictly cannon. I might start now, though.

I do occasionally sing The Wild Rover in an odd manner, but it's a manner I don't think I can convey if I'm not in the same room.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I was never in Scouts, or for that matter a Brownie. (My mum wouldn't let me because she took offence at the uniform, not because it was militaristic, but because it was ugly.)

And yes, I have no idea what you're talking about.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Strictly cannon *kaboom*
(canon)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Well I got that message, yes, I've just never heard the song.
(Thinking about it my hat is safe and warm in the lab and I am not. Bah.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Also, your icon is great.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

glad you like it :)
feel free to gank, of course.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't think I know that version of The White Cockade. Will quiz the mother when she arrives tomorrow.

She has a habit of singing Blue Suede Shoes to the tune of what she tells me is Sportsmen Arise. Sadly, the only context in which I know that tune is that it's the one my mum sings Blue Suede Shoes too.

[venta.livejournal.com]

*commits hara-kiri with red pencil*

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I was disappointingly old, and ITV was disappointingly close to getting rid of the charming little presentation graphics, when I learnt that you can sing "(On) Ilkley Moor 'Baht Hat" to the Yorkshire Television tune.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. valkyriekaren's answer reminds me. I expect the chorus, when properly performed, to go:

On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at
[Where's that?]
On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at
[On a map!]
On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at
[Where the ostriches play football]

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it wasn't just me whose parents perpretrated that kind of thing!

Anyway, everyone knows the three kings came from a mysterious place called Orientar.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The Brownies wouldn't let me join Rainbows because I was terribly, terribly rude to Brown Owl in the library car park at the age of four. I can't even remember what I said but it better have been good.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

I was in the Scouts, but we never sang this there.

Next people will be telling me they've never heard "Bestialiy's best boys!"

Incidentally, my sister left the Brownies after she burned her hand doing some kind of home safety badge. Funny world.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Shag a wallaby ?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Not only did I know that "While Shepherd's watched" fits to that tune, I even have a hard copy of sheet music containing the words for While Shepherds and the music for Ilkley Moor as one piece.