The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #140565   Message #3231293
Posted By: Charley Noble
29-Sep-11 - 05:22 PM
Thread Name: Juberju/Juber ju/Ju bi ju
Subject: RE: Juberju/Juber ju/Ju bi ju
I don't think "juberju" has anything to do with nautical nomenclature. It's just shore slang picked up in the dancehall used to juice up the conversation.

Here's the reference to Knickerbocker Line from the Grimsby Fisherman thread:

The uncredited text I quoted above is indeed Sam Larner's, though it has On passage where he sang A passage, and He's for He is in the final line of verse 2. The only significant difference is that it omits Sam's final chorus:

So watch her and twig her, the porra-per-ay she goes,
High heels, painted toes, Jinny is all the go;
She is one of the flash girls, doesn't she cut a shine?
She can do the double shuffle on the Knickerbocker Line.

This from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, The Singing Island, 1960. Sam apparently learned the song around 1890. For more on the chorus, see The Knickerbocker Line, above.


I remember puzzling over the term "chalk ginger blue" which I finally tracked down to "cake walk" dancing. One young captain used the expression for describing how well his ship was sailing in a brick breeze. Took me years to run that one down.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble