THE WHALE (MOPY DICK)
As recorded by Flanders & Swann on “At the Drop of a Hat” and “The Complete Flanders & Swann”

The bottlenose whale is a furlong long,
And likewise wise, but headstrong strong,
And he sings this very lugubrious song
As he sails through the great antarctic ocean blue:

“Oh, why do I swim through seas antarctical, ooh!
Freezing cold in ev’ry particle, ooh!
Some porpoises invited me to come and join their school.
They brought me here then swam away and shouted: ‘April fool!’

“If ever I catch that school of porpoises, ooh!
They won’t get no habeas corpuses, ooh!
I’m lost alone in a frozen zone and I'm almost frozen, too,
A shivering quivering bottlenose whale,
The bottlenose whale with the flu-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-choo!

“Oh, I used to play like a gay leviathan, ooh!
Squirting up jets like a soda siaphon, ooh!
Now ev’ry time I try to lift my hankie to my nose,
A great harpoon goes whistling by to a shout of ‘There she blows!’

“I like my oceans equatorial, ooh!
Where the water’s warm and the breeze less boreal, ooh!
It’s Fahrenheit minus twenty-nine and I don’t know what to do,
A rubbery, blubbery bottlenose whale,
The bottlenose whale with the flu-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-choo!.”

The bottlenose whale is a furlong long,
And likewise wise, but headstrong strong,
And he sings that very lugubrious song
As he sails through the ocean blue.

Though red your nose, though your toes are froze,
Though cold it seems to you,
Remember the tale of the bottlenose whale,
Who has not even got his own hot water bot,
The bottlenose whale with the flu-oooooooo. Ah-choo!

* * *
Sometimes it sounds like they’re singing “bottlenosed whale” but since Wikipedia uses the spelling “bottlenose whale” I have decided to omit the “d.”