I love the holidays, we've had such a good day. First of all Harry made cupcakes with his Grandma whilst I went to my last Psychology appointment, and then we all iced the cakes, and then we watched Harry make this magnificent multicoloured dinosaur:
Doesn't he rock?
And then we went for a walk in Longleat in the sunshine and sang A Horse called Bill over and over again. But I always forget the last verse so we came home and I looked it up online. Oddly, I found that there are at least five verses I've never heard of and heaps of different versions of the song which all start the same way but meander off in different directions towards the end.
I think it's an American folk song and now I want to find the 'original' words but I'm not sure how to go about it. How will I know which version is the original? The version I know was taught to me by my Father when I was a little girl and it was my favourite song. So I taught it to Harry and now it's his too. My family has been singing it for years but I never knew about the other verses.
Anyway it goes like this:
A horse named Bill.
I had a horse, his name was Bill
When he ran he couldn't stand still
He ran away
One day
And also I ran with him.
He ran into a barber shop
He ran so fast he couldn't stop
And then he fell exhaustionized
With his teeth
In the barber's left shoulder.
I had a girl and her name was Daisy
When she sang the cat went crazy
With Saint Vituses
And deleriums
And all kinds of cataleptics.
One day she sang a song about
A man who turned himself inside out
And jumped
into the river
'Cause he was... so very sleepy.
Oh I went out into the woods last year
To hunt for beer and not for deer
I am
I ain't
A great sharp-shooter.
At shooting birds I am a beaut
There is no bird I cannot bloody shoot
In the eye
Or in the ear
Or in the finger.
Well I went up in a balloon so big
The people on the Earth, they looked like a pig
Like mice
Like katydids
Like flieses and like fleasins.
The balloon turned up with its bottom side higher
It fell on the wife of a country squire
She made a noise
Like a hound dog
Like a steam whistle... also like dynamite.
In 'Frisco Bay there lives a whale
She eats pork chops by the bale
By the hatbox
By the pillbox
By the hogshead
By the schooner.
Her name is Luna, she's a peach
But don't leave food within her reach
Or babies
Or nurse-maids
Or chocolate ice cream sodas.
She loves to laugh and when she smiles
You see her teeth for miles and miles
And tonsils
And spare ribs
And things too fierce to mention.
When she's happy, how she plays
She rolls her eyes for days and days
And vibrates
And Yodels
And breaks the ten commandments.
What do you do in a case like that?
What do you do, but jump on your hat
And your grandmother
And your toothbrush
And anything that's helpless.
I didn't know the Daisy verse, the sleepy man verse, either of the balloon ones and I thought the ten commandments one was the last one...
So now I'm going to have to learn them all, in order to be able to sing it properly all the way through. Which will be another random and pointless yet weirdly pleasing string to my bow...
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