Well, what I thought of first was the one that goes:

Well, I wish I was a hole in the ground,
Wish I was a hole in the ground
If I was a hole in the ground, well I'd...

...and than I remembered it was about a mole. (click) (also click here for fun)

But the song you're talking about, Vic, is definitely "Green Grass Grew All Around."

---

Here's the entry from the Traditional Ballad Index:

Rattling Bog, The

DESCRIPTION: Cumulative song about the "great chain of being." Sample: "On this branch there was a twig/Rare twig, a rattling twig/Twig on the branch and the branch on the tree and the tree in the bog/Bog down in the valley-o." Most versions complete a circle
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1877
KEYWORDS: ritual cumulative nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South),Scotland) Wales US(MW,SE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Randolph 459, "The Green Grass Grew All Round" (1 text)
Sharp-100E 98, "The Tree in the Wood" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sharp/Karpeles-80E 58, "The Tree in the Wood" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy 96, "An Wedhen War An Vre (The Tree on the Hill)" (1 Cornish text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 391, "The Green Grass Grew All Around" (1 text)
DT, RATLNBOG*
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Green Grass Growing All Around
The Endless Circle
Notes: The Cornish words printed by Kennedy are by Talek, based on English texts with some Breton influence. - RBW
File: ShH98

---

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Instructions

The Ballad Index Copyright 2000 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

---

The Thom Parrot song called Hole in the Ground from the Best of Broadside collection has nothing to do with the song at hand, but it's a very powerful song about the Vietnam war. The American GI's befriend a Vietnamese kid who says his father lives in a "hole in the ground" (a bunker), and then the GI's blow up the bunker.
-Joe Offer-