Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson wrote a September Song. But so did Dennis Beerpint, with music by Binder:
Ho, boys, ho! It is September now, and we must do some marching across the muddy loam! From Pang Hill down to Blister Lane we’ll march and sing and bawl, for we are Mister Pipkin’s boys and we have got our sticks!
We swing our sticks from left to right and sweep away dull care! For now it is September and we march right past the pond. All the ducks are in the pond, doing what ducks do, and we are Mister Pipkin’s boys in our inelegant boots!
When we get to Blister Lane we’ll turn upon a coin, it might be a florin with embossings of a king. But we care not for kings or queens or Stalin with his pocks. We only care for Pipkin and his ukase that we march!
The whole month of September back and forth you’ll watch us march! And you’ll be kept behind a fence so you don’t hinder us. The fence is of barbed wire and electric to the touch. But you can buy a choc ice from the kiosk in the field!
Ho, boys, ho! We’ll chuck our sticks aloft! And then we’ll catch them as they drop and swing them once again! Mister Pipkin and his wife will come to watch us march! They’ll sit in deckchairs by the pond and clap us as we pass!
And when we’re strafed by fighter jets we’ll sit in the mud and cry! We’ll sob our little hearts out and fill the pond with tears! It’s the same every September, according to the stats. They’re kept by Mister Pipkin in his creamy vellum book.
Ho, boys, ho! That is quite enough! Dennis Beerpint wrote this song for us to roar aloud! But Mister Pipkin is stone deaf and doesn’t hear a word. So we will march in silence and we’ll throw away our sticks.
That would be a fine song to add to the rambling repertoire of those three intrepid fellows, Ed, Will and Ginger.
Random quote:
People like to put labels on us’, explains Ginger. ‘Troubadour, minstrel … the fact is, we’re just walking and singing, because we like it.’
Brit : I am beginning to think all links lead, sooner or later, to Paul Kingsnorth. Now there’s a conspiracy theory to be embroidered.
When one suddenly discovers such rare comic gold as the Kingsnorth, it would be criminal not to mine it a little bit.
‘Country Life’ is mentioned in the article..
It’s a song that’s sung in a local session I attend..
Sing lusty now boys!
COUNTRY LIFE
chorus:
I like to rise when the sun she rises,
early in the morning
And I like to hear them small birds singing,
Merrily upon their layland
And hurrah for the life of a country boy,
And to ramble in the new mowed hay.
1. In spring we sow at the harvest mow
And that is how the seasons round they go
but of all the times choose I may
I’d be rambling through the new mowed hay.
2. In summer when the summer is hot
We sing, and we dance, and we drink a lot
We spend all night in sport and play
And go rambling in the new mown hay
3. In autumn when the oak trees turn
We gather all the wood that’s fit to burn
We cut and stash and stow away
And go rambling in the new mown hay
4. In winter when the sky’s gray
we hedge and ditch our times away,
but in summer when the sun shines gay,
We go ramblin’ through the new mowed hay.
5. Oh Nancy is my darling gay
And she blooms like the flowers every day
But I love her best in the month of May
When we’re rambling through the new mown hay
6. I like to hear the Morris dancers
Clash their sticks and drink our ale
I like to hear those bells a-ringing
As we ramble in the new mown hay
Well ho! me boys and a raddle roddle o!
With our stout old staffs and Ginger’s wooden spoons,
Tis a rambling we will go!
Fiddle raddle oh.