Discuss: Woad

Subject: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 04:20 AM

Does anyone know the orogin of the Woad song, which is sung to the tune of Men of Harlech? The words are in the database, but no author. PS. The words I know are not quite the same - variants shown below in brackets
Romans crossed the English Channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel;
Half a pint of woad per man'll
[Dress] us more than these.
[Saxon warriors laced in stitches]
[building] beds for bugs in britches
We have [things] to clothe us which is
Not a nest for fleas.

Last line was Go it, Ancient B's

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 04:29 AM

We had a thread on this quite recently, see here

Brian

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 05:34 AM

OK thanks very much. Once again, I had missed that! Our group in Dubai (1980-1982) used to sing it, and actually derived our name from it - (NOT my idea).
PS Scientists have recently established that it was apparently not painted on, but used as tattoo!

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: GUEST,author author
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 11:30 AM

Mr Rudyard Kipling

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 11:54 AM

Was that a serious suggestion, a known fact, a humorous remark or what?

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: MMario
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 12:17 PM

Ancient Britons

I do believe he was serious.

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 12:43 PM

neat song...and the nearest I come to singing the blues

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Fergie
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 02:32 PM

A friend of mine who had a lisp, (he couldnt say the rrrr sound) so; he wote this little wime and this twed weminded me of it-

Who would woad wood? Edwood Woodwood would woad wood.-

that it.

It was his contention that to woad something was to iye it blue.

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 02:55 AM

So where did the other verse come from then?

LTS

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Lanfranc
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 06:48 AM

The earlier thread attributes the song to W. Hope Jones, and this would seem to be a reasonable deduction.

It is almost certainly not by Rudyard Kipling, any more than "Green Fields of France" is Traditional Irish!

Flanders & Swann, Paddy Roberts and Rudyard Kipling (to name but three (four?)) are often credited with the authorship of songs that are merely similar to others that they did write. cf threads on "She Loved a Portugee" inter alia.

It can be very hard to obtain a correct attribution for comic songs, because they often evolve over time. For example, did Hoffnung's address to the Oxford Union predate "Paddy's Sick Note", or was it the other way round?

I'll leave before the thread creep gets any worse.

Alan

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 08:10 AM

'Green Fields of France' isn't even the correct name. It should be No Man's Land

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Snuffy
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 08:12 AM

But most people call it Willie McBride

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 07:23 AM

Lanfrac PLEASE PLEASE Green field of France is called No Man's Land by Eric Bogle and he should know he wrote it. And while I'm on the ssubject the countless white crosses do not stand mute in the sand, the countless white crosses in mute witness stand. Glad I've got that off my chest

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 07:52 AM

Glad someone else knows the right words - see June Tabor's version -the definitive as far as I am concerned

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Susan of DT
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 09:42 AM

A: Hoffnung definitely precedid The Sick Note, but the joke was considerably older than either.

B: The final line of WOAD is the subject of mild controversy. Hickerson sang it as W-O-A-D, Woad! which loses the internal thyme; "Go it, ancient B's" fits the rhyme scheme, but is (IMO) feeble. Back in te early 50's, I heard it as "Bollocks to the breeze!" which I vastly prefer.

(dick greenhaus)

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Bert
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 03:50 PM

Yup Susan it is a bit feeble, but it's a young schoolboy song of yesteryear and "Bollocks to the breeze!" stands out as being considerably cruder than the rest of the song.

Not that I'm against being crude, but I don't think it fits this song.

But of course I first learned it as "Go it, ancient B's" so I'm biased.

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 05:10 AM

Bert Were you ever in Dubai?

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 12:01 PM

a picture of woad in use (light facial decorations)

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Lanfranc
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 06:13 PM

I first came across "The Woad Song" under the title "The Battle Hymn of the Ancient Britons" in a Boy Scout songbook in the late 50s. "The Woad Song" is easier to introduce when one is drunk, and when else does one sing it?

I KNOW that the correct title is "No Man's Land", and that it was written by Eric Bogle, but that doesn't prevent the odd Hibernian introducing it as an "Irish song called "The Green Fields of France" or "Willie McBride"" - at which point I usually leave the room!

I agree that the June Tabor version of "No Man's Land" is probably the best on record, but I saw Alex Campbell's sensitive interpretation reduce audiences to tears in the days before the song became hackneyed and stale.

I sometimes think a moratorium should be declared on singing some songs - this is a case in point!

Creep on - O thread!

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Lanfranc
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 06:20 PM

Oh, and the last line in the aforesaid songbook was "Go it, Ancient Bs!"

"Bollocks to the Breeze" is IMHO a later (rugby club?) coarsening of the original, which had more wit. An obvious reference to the Caledonian lack of underwear beneath the kilt.

I agree that "W O A D" is a bit weak, and I've never heard it sung that way.

Back on course?

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: Snuffy
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 08:30 PM

Is it true that Tony Blair chose "No Man's Land" as one of his Desert Island Discs, and said it was written by a young man called Eric Bogle who was killed on the Western Front in 1917?

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: GUEST,Lanfranc at the orifice
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 08:50 AM

Shame we can't rename this thread, but at least it's keeping the list a bit shorter!

Snuffy, if so, it shows that Blair listens as attentively to lyrics as he does to the opinions of the electorate!

Subject: RE: The Woad song - request for origins
From: pavane
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 09:11 AM

Another thing we agree on (e.g. because of IR35, but don't divert the thread to tax discussions)