Lyr Add: The Badger Song

Subject: Lyr Add: The Badger Song
From: cnd
Date: 15 Jan 24 - 02:12 PM

This is a fairly obscure camp song I heard once about 2010 -- at the time I dismissed it as silly and childish, lacking my current appreciations for the importance of camp songs in the folk tradition, but have remembered (part of it) ever since. The search is incommoded by the "Badger song," a popular flash video from 2003.

Besides my memory and that of people I went to camp with, the only records of the song I can find are the FaceBook video (click), which shows several Cub Scouts performing the song, and the Troop 732 2010 Centennial Summer Camp D Bar A Scout Ranch Handbook.

That book is from the Great Lakes Council (Michigan area) and the FaceBook video is from Palmetto Council (South Carolina), posted in 2015. I believe the camp I heard it at was in Virginia, but it's been a while, so it may have been from a camp I was at in North Carolina.

I've transcribed the song and actions below; I personally don't really remember any of it other than the line about badger heaven and the ineffably-obnoxious chorus, which is purported to sound like a badger.

I'm curious if anyone else has ever heard the song or knows anything about its origins.

THE BADGER SONG

Badger one, badger all, let's all do the badger song **
*badger noises* (with hands up under chin, like a badger)

Badger two, badger three, let's all climb the badger tree
*badger noises* (pantomiming climbing)

Badger four, badger five, let's all do the badger jive
*badger noises* (dance with finger pointed up)

Badger six, badger seven, let's all go to badger Heaven
*badger noises* (with hands clasped in prayer)

Badger eight, badger nine, everybody stop - it's badger time!
*dance break*


** OR Badger zero, badger one, let's all have some badger fun

(*badger noies* = ih ih ihh, ih ih ihh, ih ih ih, ih-ih-ih-ih)
"ih" is pronounced less like the indecisive "uh" sound or the Canadian proclamation "eh", but more throaty and guttural, like a grunt you'd make when exerting force, or a frustrated sigh. But it's high-pitched, loud, and ideally, annoying.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Badger Song
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 15 Jan 24 - 02:34 PM

I would note the negative fact that it's not mentioned (at least by that name) in Patricia Averill's Camp Song, Folk Song. Possibly it's too new, but if it's old, then it can't have been very popular. She checked a lot of sources.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Badger Song
From: cnd
Date: 15 Jan 24 - 02:52 PM

I would lean towards the latter. The songbook above is dated 2010 and published (to issuu) in 2012, so it definitely precedes her (2014) book. I was involved with several Scout Camps in one capacity or another from 2010-2015, and I definitely recall hearing it towards the earlier end of that range. But outside of people who were involved with the troop around the same time as me, I haven't found any other scouter, former or current, who recognizes it.