Subject: RE: History - BBC's 'Singing Together'
From:
GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:17 PM
Yes, I have a copy of BBC Radio for schools spring term 1970 and it has the Railway Boggart song in it:
Dwarfs live underground, Dryads in trees, there are trolls and goblins and imps and ogres, bogeymen and kelpies but much better than these and very much nicer is such a rogue as the railway boggart. He doesn't clank chains but has lots of fun in railway trains.
He's no long ago fairy, elf or gnome. He is not a fire drake or a pixie. Doesn't haunt the bedrooms in a stately old home, there's only one place to see all his tricks, he's a railway boggart who likes to take pains to do all his tricks in railway trains.
Ghosties and ghouls which go bump in the night, or the mischievous Cornish sprite called a piskie, little outer-space men come and give you a fright and leprechauns sometimes spit in the whisky! A railway boggart from all this refrains and only does tricks in railway trains.
Further in the booklet, page 20:
The Boggart's campaign
When the boggart heard this song he said 'this has gone on too long;to see this family get so poor is something I'll no more endure.'
'O boggart dear, that's kind of you, but what do you propose to do?'
Well, I shall use my magic powers on those lost passengers of ours. So when in cars those people sit, they'll wish they'd never thought of it. Whereever traffic signs are found I'll turn them all the wrong way round and angry motorists will say,
I can't think how I lost my way but this road can't be right, I know...I came through here an HOUR ago!
I'll haunt their cars. I'll grind and squeak, I'll make a different noise each week. But when they take it for repair the garage will find nothing there. On narrow roads, just where they bend, with queues behind that never end, I'll make their silly tyres go flat.
The spare wheel? O, I've thought of that, for when they get it out of view they'll find that it is punctured too.
O, I'll make traffic jams get worse till cars go slower than a hearse; I'll make those motorists weep and whine,
O give us back our railway line!
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sj
