The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #1479   Message #1369323
Posted By: Tradsinger
02-Jan-05 - 09:31 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Sow Song (Suzanna's a Funicle Man)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE GALLOWAY MAN (from Wisdom Smith)
This is sometimes referred to as the grunting-farting-whistling song. I have recorded several singers in Gloucestershire who could sing it, usually based on the Albert Richardson 1928 recording above. There is a recording on "All Brought up on Cider" on the Folktrax catalogue (Peter Kennedy). It's a version I recorded from the late Bill Cooper of Witcombe, Gloucestershire, in the 1970s. There was also a good but different version called the Galloway Man from the Smith family of Gloucestershire travellers - the notes from the MT Band of Gold CD say:

The Galloway Man (sung by Wisdom Smith) (Roud 1737)
(Recorded by Mike Yates at the Cat and Fiddle pub, Whaddon Road, Cheltenham, in 1970)

See once on a farm they grabs 'n ol' sow
(grunt)-ow, (fart)-ow, (whistle)-idle-y-dow
With a-lee, with a-lyre, with a-lee an' me poor go round
We poor the bouncing Galloway man
(grunt)-an, (fart)-an, (whistle)
Over the bouncing Galloway man

See, this old pig larned the young'uns to grunt
(grunt)-unt, (fart)-unt, (whistle)-idle-y-dunt ...

See, three little pigs went into the straw ...

See three little pigs 'ad six months in gaol
One one to the t'other he don't give a suller [bugger]
So long as they gettin' the best o' swill ...

I suspect that the song is much older than the 1928 recording. Can anyone out there enlighten us?

Gwilym