The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #38067   Message #534135
Posted By: GUEST,bigJ
23-Aug-01 - 04:54 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Hard Case (Ewan MacColl)
Subject: Lyr Add: HARD CASE (Ewan MacColl)
Aha! Second pile on the right.
The book is called 'The Skiffle Album - featuring skiffle and folk songs popularised by ALAN LOMAX and the RAMBLERS' Published at two shillings and six pence by Feldman and Co. Shaftesbury Avenue, London in 1957.(I don't remember being that young).
The introduction says. "Alan Lomax stole the show at so many parties with his Texas jailhouse songs that Ewan MacColl - not finding any British folksongs to combat them - made up this one. The language is absolutely authentic, for Ewan has spent time interviewing old-time lags who have been down to Dartmoor for vacations of various lengths."

HARD CASE

I've done my time in Liverpool, I know the Scrubs as well (Wormwood Scrubs),
But they'll never get me to the Moor, I'd rather top meself! (commit suicide).

Chorus
Hard case, hard case, hard cases galore,
But the hardest cases in the world are the screws (warders/ gaolers) around the moor.

They've got big fleas in Strangeways, They're big in Peterhead,
But the Dartmoor fleas can kick a man and knock him out of bed.

The work is hard the snout (tobacco) is scarce, the privileges are few,
And the screws are always thinking up new strokes to work on you.

I've been a porridge eater now for twenty years or more,
But I never ate Grade A cement till I was on the moor.

So if you're keen on finding out what the devil has in store,
You've only got to do a stretch at the college on the Moor.

The Ramblers, by the way, were: Alan Lomax; Ewan MacColl; Peggy Seeger; Shirley Collins; Bruce Turner - clarinet; Jim Bray (?) - bass; an unknown guitar player.