Here ye are Joe G...recently received a bunch of songs from the late Alan Todd's daughter Gill including the Ghost of the Cos, Queen St Girls and Keep the Plague out of Town. Next time your back in town try and get yerself to the Pot House on the Headland where we've a fortnightly Friday folk club (see the dates at www.folkfolk.co.uk)

The Beacon Song (tune: Tom Brown)

It happened in the days of Good Queen Bess
England was in dire distress
Phillip of Spain was giving it crutch
And Lizzy the first didnt like it much

No more firing beacons, no more firing beacons
No more firing beacons, that's what the letter said

So she caused some beacons to be manned
Day and night all around the land
When the Spanish Armada hove in sight
Rub two sticks together and set it alight

Good Queen Bess thought a letter should be sent
To Hartlepool so off it went
Threepenny stamp (second class rate)
it didnt get delivered, it was 10 days late

Now our Lord Mayor was nobody's fool
He'd been taught at Galley's Field school
But at reading letters he wasn't very strong
And that's how he came to read it wrong

He read the letter, he addressed the crowd
"Frying bacon's not allowed
Good Queen Bess says it has to stop
So you'll have to buy patties from Verill's fish shop"

Constable Parsons heard the plans
And went round collecting all the frying pans
First from Southgate, then from the Croft
Northgate, Heugh and the Spion Kop

He went to St Hilda's at the dead of night
And dug a grave by candlelight
He buried those pans I'm sorry to say
He'd filled in the hole by the break of day

That's my story and I've made it plain
Hartlepool's still at war with Spain
What with that and the trouble with France
British Foreign Policy's got no chance



cheers

Sean