My parents both sang odd snatches of songs; I don't think I ever heard either of them come out with a complete song. In my mother's case, these were mostly poular songs of various eras, and some Irish songs, often learned from her mother or her aunt, who came from Clonmell. My father would come out with bits of operatic songs, often in parody form; bits of G&S: or army songs. Often these would be only one or two lines, sometimes with odd 'missing' or substituted words, which were obviously cleaned up for the sake of us children. One such was another version of 'Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up' (mentioned above by Jim Dixon). It had a different tune, which I can't identify. It ran:
All the monkeys in the zoo
Have their noses* painted blue;
Horsey, keep your tail up
Or I'll do the same to you
* I realised in later life that this was an example of the 'cleaning up' mentioned above, and that this word should have been... well, use your imagination.
Another was :
Do ye ken John Peel? Yes, I ken him very weel.
This one never went any further, and I always assumed it was just a silly rhyme. However, a serious stroke in 1998 (when he was in his 89th year) left him with vascular dementia - a form of dementia caued by brain damage after a stroke - which, among other things, altered some of his behaviour, including his sense of propriety. I looked after him until he died at 93, and it was only during this period that I waas treated to the full version, which went:
Do ye ken John Peel? Yes I ken him very weel.
Though he lies with his wife, but he canna get a feel,
'Cos she lies on her side, so he canna get a ride
And he rises with the horn in the morning.
He then turned to me and said: "That's a folk song - you should sing that!" (Vulgar Boatman please note!)
John Kelly.