The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77136 Message #1372717
Posted By: Bob Bolton
05-Jan-05 - 11:29 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Driver's Song (Ewan MacColl)
Subject: RE: lyr.requ.MacColl DriverĀ“s Song
G'day Konrad,
Would you be thinking of Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song, which is about a bulldozer repairer ... ?
It's not in the Digital Tradition (DT) ... at least, not under that name ... but it's the one that starts:
I am a roving rambler, a fitter to my trade, I can fix you anything, a camshaft to a spade. I can fix a dodgy gearbaox - repair a broken head; De-coke a Leyland engine while I'm standing on my head.
So it's shift, boys, shift! Do your job and draw your pay. When this dam is finished, I'll soon be on my way. I'll clean my tools, and wrap them, in a pair of oily jeans. You'll always find me working where you find the big machines.
It only has a couple of stanzas - and a variable chorus. I guess I identify the (imaginary) character as a stock type of those Pommy fitters I met when I worked on Hydro Schemes, here in Australia, in the 1960s.