The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #36282   Message #3156724
Posted By: Joe Offer
18-May-11 - 09:16 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Small Island
Subject: Lyr Add: SMALL ISLAND (from Gordon Bok)
Gordon Bok did record this song. Here are the lyrics posted on Gordon's Website. Morwen, have you found other recordings of this song?

SMALL ISLAND
(Traditional)

Small Island, go back where you come from
Small Island, go back where you come from
When you come by the one and the two and the three
You taking our food and you leaving us hungry
Small Island, go back where you come from

Number one: no rice in this land
Number two: no rice in this land
Now when you come by the one and the two the three
You taking our food and you mash down the jungle
Small Island, go back where you come from

Winston Churchill going 'cross through this English Channel
Winston Churchill going 'cross through this English Channel
Now when you got no guns and got no revolver*
Bottle and stick kicking hell in Gibraltar
Small Island, go back where you come from



*refers to a speech Churchill made during WWII

Small Island is recorded on the Gordon Bok album Dear To Our Island (2006)

Notes: Another song I got about 40 years ago from a young shipmate, Harold Williams, from South Caicos. I had asked him how folks in the British Virgin Islands felt having their country owned by people so far away who never even saw it, and he said "Oh, we got a song about that." And sang this.

I can't find that I ever wrote it down, even in the logs I kept.