Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)

Subject: RE: BERT! Started some lyrics for ya!
From: Bert
Date: 20 Jan 00 - 01:51 PM

Hurrrrumph! That means I'll have to LEARN it by Wednesday!

Bert.

Subject: RE: BERT! Started some lyrics for ya!
From: Áine
Date: 20 Jan 00 - 02:08 PM

Well, I never! Yer welcome, ya bugger ya!

- Áine

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 05:41 PM

Thread #77810   Message #1393986
Posted By: Joe Offer
31-Jan-05 - 03:13 AM
Thread Name: BS: People wearing Galoshes
Subject: ADD: If ye didnae have yer wellies

This page (click) has lyrics to two versions, with tentative attribution to Billy Connolly. Anybody have a more accurate version?
-Joe Offer-

If ye didnae have yer wellies, where would ye be
youd be in the hospital or infirmareeeeeeee
you could have a dose o the flu, or even pleurisyyyeee
if ye didnae have yer feet in yer wellies!

Oh wellies they are wonderful
oh wellies they are swell
cos they keep out the water
but they keep in the smell

---

CHORUS
If it wasn't for your wellies where would you be
You'd be in the hospital or infirmary
'Cause you would have a dose of the flu or even pleurisy
If you didn't have your feet in your wellies

Oh wellies they are wonderful, oh wellies they are swell
'Cause they keep out the water and they keep in the smell
And when you're sitting in a room you can always tell
When some bugger takes off his wellies

CHORUS

Oh and when you're out walking in the country with a bird
And you're strolling over fields just like a farmer's herd
And somebody shouts, "Keep off the grass" and you think how absurd
and SQUELCH you find why farmers all wear wellies

CHORUS

There's fishermen and firemen, there's farmers and all
Men out digging ditches and working in the snow
This country it would grind to a halt and not a thing would grow
If it wasn't for the workers in their wellies

CHORUS

Oh Edward, Heath and Wilson they haven't made a hit
So you'd better get your feet in your wellies

CHORUS

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 06:07 PM

It's not 'cause' but 'fer'. "Fer you would have a dose of the flu..."
(Youtube version, Billy singing it in 1976)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 12:39 PM

And "wasnae" rather than "wasn't".
Don't think anyone on the thread has mentioned that the tune is from the much older song "The Work o' the Weavers" by David Shaw.(1776-1856). Billy's song has some lines that are part parody.
Shaw's song is in the DT as "the Work of the Weavers"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 12:52 PM

I was hoping you'd come along Tattie. I only lived in Glasgae for a few years, (loved it!) and you know better than I. 'If it wasnae fer yer wellies' is exactly right.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 12:59 PM

wisnae
(no' wasnae - Trish lives in the posh Embry area, no' the Glesca yin!)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 01:05 PM

Ah wis gaun tae cry it either/or GM!
Ah wid aye pronoonce it wisnae!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 02:53 PM

Hee hee! Hello Gallus! Yes, I too pronounce it 'wisnae' but ah wisnae too sure how tae spell it. How often one of my darling six year-old Glasgae pupils would plead, "It wisnae me miss." !
In the Youtube video, 1976, Billy looks so young. But the audience just sit there unmoved and don't look terribly impressed or amused by his song. In Norfolk we'd call them a bunch of staaarched faaaarts!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Gurney
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 06:19 PM

There is also Fred Dagg's 'Gumboot Song.' There's a copy on Youtube, and that is the version popular here in the antipodes.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 05:28 AM

One year at Sabhal Mor Ostaig (Skye) there was an African group of male singers/dancers (whose name escapes my but i shall find the cd or possibly it was a cassette....)visiting - maybe as part of the annual festival on Sleat Peninsula? They ran a dance workshop during the day, and did an evening performance of songs and dances....wonderful! One of the highlights was their welly boot dance - nothing like Billy Connolly's tho!! Think it was in celebration of working on railway construction? (Ma memory is rubbish...)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 08:10 AM

Could have been the Black Umfolosi 5? I saw them both in Edinburgh and at Sidmouth Festival: tremendous! There are lots of "Gumboot Dancers" on YouTube, but here are the BU5: Gumboot dancing came originally from South African miners, when they were forbidden to speak to each other.

Gumboot Dancing

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 03:02 PM

Hi Tattie - think that was the name!!!!did they also do a train song, shosoloso something like that?
They were brilliant..... think i also saw another maybe younger group of African male singers/dancers ...wish i had kept a diary as i can hardly remember any details of my life!!!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 03:14 PM

During my early days as a teacher here in Norfolk (after I arrived from Scotland forty years ago!), a fabulous troupe of Senegalese dancers/musicians came to the Theatre Royal in Norwich, and I took my entire class of 9yr-olds to an evening performance. They were entranced, and afterwards the performers came out into the foyer to talk to my children, but in French, so I had to translate.
During the following week, we did no end of art, poetry, geography and so on about West Africa.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Welly Boot Song (Billy Connolly)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 11:38 AM

GM: there are lots of versions of Shosoloza on YouTube, both S African and Zimbabwean.
Senofou: bet your kids loved that!