Songs about Pipe Smoking

Subject: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: saulgoldie
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 12:44 PM

I know this is increasingly politically incorrect, but...I like to smoke a pipe. Does anyone know of songs that mention smoking a pipe? Thanks.

Saul

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:17 PM

My curse is on you, Sweeney
For ye have me fairly robbed.
You sit there by the fireside
Your pipe stuck in yer gob.
You sit there by the fireside
From the cold daylight 'till dawn;
And you never can be bothered
To plow the rocks of Bawn.
-----------------------------
Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he
He called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
-------------------------------------------
His friends assembled at the wake
And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch.
And first they brought in tay and cake
Then pipes, tobacco, and whiskey punch!

Just off the top o' the brain pan.


A

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:23 PM

It's more a matter of health than political correctness. In fact, I doubt PC comes into it at all. Lots of cracking baccy songs out there though.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: gnu
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:27 PM

Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he
He called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
I guess we all know about Old King Cole.

Apologies to George Carlin.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Max Johnson
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:38 PM

Topically, The Rocks Of Bawn

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Max Johnson
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:39 PM

Sorry, missed Amos' post.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Sugwash
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 01:53 PM

Talchauano Girls

I bought me a clay pipe
They called it a meerschaum
It melted like butter on a hot sunny day

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 02:01 PM

SWEETHEART OF SIGMA CHI

Subject: Lyr Add: SERIOUS TOM
From: RTim
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 02:20 PM

From the Gardiner Manuscripts - Mr. Channon, Basingstoke, Hampshire.

Tim Radford

=======================

SERIOUS TOM.

Here's Serious Tom sits over his bowl
With his pipe & his pot for to cheer his soul
While his gay companions round him sing
He'll muse awhile and then He'll sing
He'll muse awhile and then He'll sing

A single-life is a life of joy
There is no girl on Earth shall my peace destroy
For I'll laugh & joke & drink & sing
And live as happy as a King,
For while we are here with our friends all around
There's no greater pleasure can be found.

I own, I love a single life
There's many live happy with a wife
But when all is said and all is done
The hazard is too great to run
The hazard is too great to run.

A single life - etc..

Subject: Lyr Add: THE HAPPY MAN (for Morris Dance)
From: RTim
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 02:21 PM

A song and Morris dance from Adderbury

Tim Radford

===================

THE HAPPY MAN.

How happy's that man
That's free from all care
Who loves to make merry (Repeat)
With a drop of good beer.

Chorus
With his pipe & his friends
Puffing hours away
Singing song after song
Till he hails a new day.
He can laugh dance & sing
And smoke without fear
Be as happy as a king
Till he hails a new year.

How happy's that man,
That's free from all strife
He envies no other (Rep.)
But travels through life.

Our seamen of old
They fear not their foes
They throw away discord
They throw away datcord
And to mirth they're inclined.

Used in Adderbury as a song and Morris stick dance
Collected by Janet Blunt from William Walton
Who learnt when young from Solomon Lines's son.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 06:00 PM

From America:

Going Down Town to Smoke My Pipe (play party)
The Old Clay Pipe, recorded by Roy Harvey

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Stewie
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 07:18 PM

From 'Four little johnny cakes' [Oz]:

I have a good supply of books and some papers to read
Plenty of matches and a good supply of weed
I wouldn't be the squatter as beside the fire I sit
With a paper in my hand and my old pipe lit

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:00 PM

no pipe i'll smoke no horse i'll yoke..star of county down

But why start something that is not healthy? mg

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Mark Ross
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:19 PM

There is a poem Utah Phillips gave me 30 some years ago to put to music called KIT CARSON'S LAST PIPE. I'll see if I can find it.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Beer
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:29 PM

John Denver's beautiful song.

http://youtu.be/N7P8pPYSXhk

adrien

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: pdq
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:33 PM

Wasn't the WWII era song "Smoke Rings" about pipe smoke.

I thinK Merv Griffin sang it but I'm too lazy tonite to do much research.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:43 PM

If I were king, my pipe should be premier.
    The skies of time and chance are seldom clear,
    We would inform them all with bland blue weather.
    Delight alone would need to shed a tear,
    For dream and deed should war no more together.

Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear;
    Beauty, the shaft, should speed with with for feather;
    And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere,
       If I were king.

But politics should find no harbour near;
    The Philistine should fear to slip his tether;
    Tobacco should be duty free, and beer;
    In fact, in room of this, the age of leather,
    An age of gold all radiant should appear,
       If I were king.

-- W. E. Henley (1877)

I don't know if it has a tune.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 08:45 PM

Star of the County Down

No pipe I'll smoke or pale I'll yoke
Til my plough turns a rust coloured brown

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 09:12 PM

sorry guestmg - didn't see that spmehow

found this site which has a few puipe smoking songs. I feel i know some, but need to think

http://fujipub.com/ooops/quotes.html#whenmypipeburnsbright

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:51 AM

I remember reviewing in Folk Review back in the 1970s[?] a Morris Weekend in the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire, where my wife came from and her mother then still lived and had a close friend who was a morris musician, and being particularly struck by a solo dance by a young man called the "Bacca-Pipes Jig" ~~ as I recollect a sort of sword-dance [of the sort where that means laying crossed swords on the ground and stepping among them without disturbing their arrangement or cutting one's ankle, rather than the clashing, 'lock'-ending Norhumbrian sort], but using churchwarden pipes rather than swords. Not sure if it had a tune particular to it or could be done to any of the standard morris tunes.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: mg
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 01:27 AM

with his corn cob pipe and his button nose and two eyes made out of coal

Subject: Lyr Add: TOBACCO IS AN INDIAN WEED
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 04:53 AM

Tobacco is an Indian Weed

Tobacco is an Indian weed,
Grows green at morn, is cut down at eve;
It shows our decay;
We fade as hay.
Think on this,-when you smoke tobacco.

The pipe that is so lily-white,
Wherein so many take delight,
Gone with a touch;
Man's life is such,
Think on this,- when you smoke tobacco.

The pipe that is so foul within,
Shews how the soul is stained with sin;
It doth require
The purging fire.
Think on this,-when you smoke tobacco.

The ashes that are left behind,
Do serve to put us all in mind,
That unto dust,
Return we must.
Think on this,-when you smoke tobacco.

The smoke that doth so high ascend,
Shows that our life must have an end;
The vapours' gone,
Man's life is done.
Think on this,-when you smoke tobacco.

From "Songs of the West S. Baring-Gould"

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 05:06 AM

They're all pretty rubbish - write a new one!

They say I'm a whacko
Cos i like tobacco
But I think that's tripe
Cos I love my pipe

When i wave my pipe
I look pugnacious
When I light my pipe
I look sagacious
So I take every opportuney
To light my little shagarooney!

When I stroke down the shag with one finger
The rest of my fingers, round the bowl
And I thoughtfully light a lucifer
I'm as happy as a mole!

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 05:22 AM

A new one, maybe Al ~~ but not new in expression; when was a match last called 'a lucifer', would you reckon?

~M~

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 05:53 AM

just now in this song!

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 06:40 AM

How striking!

Subject: Lyr Add: DANNY BOY (parody)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 10:09 AM

Mine own from 2007:

DANNY BOY (Smoking Ban, for Summer 2007)
(new words Nigel Parsons, Original words Fred E Wetherley)

Oh Danny boy, my pipe is just a token,
No more we see the fag, or the cigar
For far away our Parliament has spoken.
From this time on, "No smoking in the bar"
They'll seek us out, wherever we are smoking.
Within the pub there'll be no place to hide.
For everywhere, their noses they'll be poking.
So kindly watch my beer while I just pop outside!

Someday, maybe, when Parliament's more mellow.
And pubs install some more effective fans
The ceilings will no longer be all yellow.
And smoking men won't need to heed these bans
And on that day we'll join the other drinkers
Once more be free of all 'Health Lobby' hype
The 'Nanny State' will throw away their blinkers
And we can drink enjoying fag, cigar, or pipe.
.    Until that day, the view against us hardens.
.    We'll go outside, to smoke & drink our ale.
.    We'll frequent pubs possessed of beer gardens
.    And drink dark mild because we are 'beyond the pale'

Feel free to re-write words to 'personalise' it to any locality bringing in a smoking ban!

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 11:39 AM

A search on http://abcnotation.com provides several hits for a tune called "Bacca Pipes", presumably for the dance MtheGM saw.

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 02:15 PM

Thanks, Jack ~~ & I found several on youtube,

eg, uploaded Feb 2007, "Charm City Rappers, Takoma Park Mini-Fest, Folklore Society of Greater Washington" ~~ 6 dancers working 2x3 ~~ all with several dancers, not just danced as solos like the one I saw all those years ago. There is indeed a similar tune for all of them, which is the one I heard then IIRC ~~ a variant of Greensleeves. The pipes used in the above example were not real clay ones, as a commenter pointed out adversely, but just metal tubes ~~ indeed one gets kicked at one point but doesn't break. The dancers in this one are not in morris gear, but in blue v-neck pullovers, white shirts and blue trousers, but there are morris-men standing around, some dancing on the fringe, in what is obviously a gym of some kind. The url is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wloL_Fj8LIo

~M~

Subject: RE: Songs about Pipe Smoking
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 02:40 PM

... and a fine two-man version of Bacca Pipes by Bridgetown Morris performed in the 2007 Portland Revels did indeed use two real clay churchwardens which survived the leaping & capering over them, and were picked up intact at the end by the two dancers who went off with them in their mouths pretending to draw on them ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKfH-EQ46AI&NR=1