Songs/poems our Mothers sang

I dreamt that I tickled my grandfathers balls,
With a little sweet oil and a feather,
And the thing that amused the old gent .most of all,
Was the way they went (click-clock ) together.
The effect of this phrase is best obtained by the gentle bringing
together of two empty beer•or~similar bottles.

Snatches & Lays (1962)

Loads of these are bringing back memories. Music has such power...

My mother used to sing:
Pale Hands I Love
Come into the Garden Maud
Magic Moments
Anything Welsh (hymns, carols, folk stuff).

My father was a music lover too. So anything operatic (Verdi in particular) was his thing. And songs like Road to Mandalay, the Hippopotamus Song (Mud)? from an ancient songbook.

My mother was not a happy woman but she used to sing Kathleen Ferrier 'Blow the wind southerly' beautifully when she thought no-one was listening.

Dad had a lovely singing voice and sang Sinatra, Bing Crosby and 'crooner' songs but he also made us giggle with his rude rhymes.

'I'll have to get some bricks
To build my chimney higher
And stop the cat next door
From piddling on the fire!'
(or words to that effect)

I have made up personal songs for each of my grandchildren based on nursery rhymes, pop songs or lullabies. They love them.

my parents loved to play the piano and Mother would stand besides the piano singing songs and hymns and playing list and other composers. Brought back loads of memories for me and made me chuckle too, what a great interesting thread Thanks

Take me back to the blackwoods-the blackwoods of Dakota-where the trees are so tall they touch the sky!

At xmas ' oh I do feel sorry I was set free
The master and the missus were so kind to me. Etc

I have no idea why a black country couple born in the 1890s should know what sounds like a negro spiritual sort of song, I have no idea?

The Blaydon Races. Have I spelt that correctly, Geordies ?

Golden Slumbers at night time, also Winken, Blinken and Nod.
My gran sang "When the Red Red Robin" and "I like a nice cup of tea"
Also- the Good Ship Lollipop
"On the good ship Lollipop
It's a nice trip to the candy shop
Where the bon-bons play
On the sunny beach in Peppermint Bay"

and
Animal crackers in my soup
Lions and tigers loop the loop
Gosh Oh gee don't I have fun
Swallowing animals one by one
When they're inside me where it's dark
I walk around like a Noah's Ark
I rub my tummy like a gloop
With animal crackers in my soup

Show me the way to go home
I'm tired and I want to go to bed
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it's gone right to my head.

My Dad would sing me that and Run Rabbit Run.

My brother and I liked our Mum to sing Frere Jacques and Sur le Pont d'Avignon, complete with dancing around the bedroom.

Thanks so much Gaga..! Years I've been looking for that - years..!! Now all I have to do is track down a copy of the sheet music... <exits stage left, muttering>

I just had a quick look on google and it says it's An Arcadian Lullaby by C W Krogmann. Hope that helps!

My Mum sang me to sleep every night. Her favourite lullaby was one that I’ve sung to my children and grandchildren – but even with all the resources of t’internet, I can find no trace of who it was written by, or where it originated. My Grandmother came from Gatehouse of Fleet in the Boarders of Scotland, so it may be Scottish in origin – but I can’t find out.
Sadly, my daughter isn’t very keen on singing, so it will probably die out with me... It’s called ‘The Man in the Moon is a Shepherd Dear’ and has a lovely soothing rhythmic melody – just right for singing as you rock a baby to sleep. The words are:
The man in the moon is a shepherd dear,
And all the bright stars are his sheep.
He watches and guards with a tender care
When you little ones are asleep.
I’m sure he has counted them all my dear,
For he is a shepherd true,
And if we but try, perhaps you and I
Can count them and name them all too

Bye-low, we’ll count as we go,
Each little twinkling star.
First one for you, then for me my dear -
What a fine lot there are!
Bye-low, we’ll name as we go,
Each little starry sheep.
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, rock as we go
Into the Land of Sleep.

A few pagea back someone qquoted a couple of lines from The Prune Song, saying 'there must be more to it'... There certainly was!

THE PRUNE SONG (1928)
by
Frank Crumit

Nowadays we often gaze on women over fifty
Without the slightest trace
Of wrinkles on their face.
Doctors go and take their dough to make them young and nifty.
But doctors I defy
To tell me just why

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
We may get them on our face;
Prunes get them every place.
Nothing every worries them, their life's an open book.
But no matter how young a prune may be, it has a worried look.

Wrinkles, wrinkles, La la la la la

Every day, in every way, the world is getting better.
We've even learned to fly.
Days go passing by.
But what about the poor old prune?
His life is only wetter.
No wonder he can't grin
In the awful stew he's in.

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Now, we may get them here and there,
But pruneies get 'em everywhere.
Babies fret until they hear a mother's lullaby
But no matter how young a prune may be you'll never hear it cry.

In the kingdom of the fruits, the prune is snubbed by others.
And they are not allowed
To mingle with the crowd.
Though they're never on display with all their highbrow brothers
They never seem to mind.
To this fact they're resigned.

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Beauty treatments always fail;
They've tried all to no avail.
Yet other fruits are envious
Because they know real well
No matter how poor a prune may be
Hot water makes it swell.

Peaches and bananas have that skin you love to touch,
But no matter how fine a prune may be it don't amount to much.
Prohibition bothers us, but prunes don't sit and brood.
No matter how young a prune may be, it's always getting stewed.
No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Baby prunes look like their dad,
Just not wrinkled quite as bad.
Prunes act very kind, they say, when sickly people moan.
But no matter how kind a prune may be, it has a heart of stone.

My mum wasn't a singer but loved poetry. She recited lots but the two i remember most were Albert and the Lion and The Owl and the Pussycat the latter of which i can still recite today as can my daughter.

Oh Galen, that brought back some memories, my father was an opera lover and was always singing arias in his beautiful tenor voice. He also sang 'oh my papa' and 'scarlet ribbons' Sook, in fact he loved music and sang all the time, as well as playing piano and any other instrument he picked up. We always sang in the car, a habit I carried on with my boys and the one with children now sings to his sons.

My mum tended to sing hymns, not so much fun!

What lovely thread. Just to pause and reflect. My mum died young but remember her singing along to the radio. On car journeys she would sing 'The. Northern lights of old Aberdeen' and 'I'll take the high road' + any Val Doonican. (Think she had little bit of a crush). My dad had lost all hearing in the blitz. He still sang all the time out of tune but we didn't care his favourite was 'I saw the moon'. I don't have a very good voice so I didn't sing very much, but now I don't care I sing all the time to my DGC mainly nursery rhymes. Ps how do you spell Doonican ??

I can remember standing on the lavatory seast watching my grandfather wash, where he spent the time singing to me, and they were all songs from the music hall and the first world war. I know how all the words.

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Stansgran - that was recorded by Cilla Black

My mother and father never sang.

My grandmother would always sing the same hymn when she was doing her housework;
''Let's all gather by the river
The beautiful beautiful river
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God''.

This had been a hymn from her childhood.She was born in 1897, and I've never heard it since my granny last sang it.

Glad someone mentioned the Scouse lullaby. Oh you are a mucky kid,dirty as a dustbin lid but I said it to my two. I think it is Seventies. Always missed off the "you'll get a belt from yer da." Though.

Youtube scores again

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQE8T6Ip6Ic
long musical intro

Ah - found it: "a 1924 English music hall song called "The Ogo-Pogo: The Funny Fox-Trot", by Cumberland Clark and Mark Strong." And it was recorded by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (of all things)!

Any idea as to who wrote and who sang the Ogo Pogo song? It looks as though it was terrific!

Many of the above, plus The Ogo Pogo song.

One fine day in Hindustan, I met a funny little man. With googly eyes and lantern jaws, (alternative: His coat was short and his tail was long), a new silk hat and some old plus-fours (alt: a hairy paw)
When I said to that quaint old chap "Why do you carry that big steel trap, that butterfly net and that rusty gun?" He replied "Listen here my son:

I'm looking for the ogo-pogo
that funny little ogopogo.
His mother was an earwig, his father was a whale, and I want to put a little salt on his tail.
I want to find the ogopogo while he's playing on his old banjo.
For the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Mayor of London, wants to put him in the Lord Mayor's show.

(Up)On his banjo night and day, the ogopogo likes to play.
He charms the snakes and chimpanzees, the big baboons and the bumblebees. Lions and tigers begin to roar "Play that melody just once more.
Do (alt: did) I hear the sound of an old banjo?
Pardon me I shall have to go, (for)

I'm looking for the ogo pogo, that funny little ogo-pogo. His mother was an earwig his father was a whale,
and I want to put a little salt on his tail,
for the Lord Mayor of London wants to put him in the Lord Mayor's show.

My grandmother was a huge fan of music hall shows, and so my mother was brought up knowing all the songs and words, much to my father's disgust. So when she heard him coming home, she would swiftly change from a rentition of The raggle-taggle gypsies' or whatever to 'Golden Slumbers kiss your eyes'.

I sang them all to my own children, I made my mother write down the words, and now my daughter sings them to hers. My grandmother's favourite was 'Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen' but we all prefer the Ogopogo song.