Songs from Primary School

I ask Alexa to play nursery rhymes when looking after my granddaughter, in fact she points at the speaker as soon as she arrives and we’ve listened to hundreds of old songs and nursery rhymes and sing and dance along to some of them. Lots have taken me back to when I was little and I still remember most of the words. It’s a brilliant tool.

Lovely thread, this is really taking me back. Was the radio series after Time and Tune called Rhythm and Melody?

I remember I love to go a-wandering, along the mountain track.

And there's one where I can only remember the odd word - Up the something something, down the rushy glen...for fear of little men...red jacket...white owl's feather. Anyone know it?

Fabulous and happy thread. Thankyou. Horrid memories of enforced singing catholic hymns at assembly.lyrics were probably wrong.
The one that I remember that brought joy is “ Bring flowers of the fairest”. It was sung in May. Yup....a Catholic primary school.
I used to take bluebells to class from the local bluebell woods.
We sang skipping rope songs. Unfortunately, I can’t remember them.
“Frere jaque” was sung in a round. A great way to learn a different language.

I thought it was Time and Tune for younger classes, and Singing Together for the older ones...but I do remember Rhythm and Melody, and Time to Move.
These programmes were a huge asset to teachers like me who were not musical, and meant all children had some musical education. It obviously made a big impact!

Gillybob I chose ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ for my husband’s funeral. It’s lucky that I got a preview copy of the service-sheet because they had put ‘Lord of all hopelessness.’
It certainly gave us a laugh, and DH would have been very amused by it.

Polly wolly doodle/Bobby Shaftoe/Speed Bonnie Boat/‘Jacky boy’, ‘Master?’ ‘Sing you well?’ ‘ Very well hey down, ho down, Derry Derry down - among the leaves so green- O’.( Can’t remember the name of that one!)
Oh - no John, no John, no John no/ Greensleeves/ On Richmond Hill there lived a lass, and so many more from The English National Songbook!

AprilRose - long may your clock tick!

The song about the three black cats in Hans’s mill is Five Eyes by Armstrong Gibbs. One of the cats had only one eye, “one-eyed Jill”.

Granny Beck - It’s The Fairies by William Allingham. I knew it as a poem but not as a song.

“Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a -hunting
For fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk, trooping all together,
Green jacket, red cap
And white owl’s feather.”

I was obsessed with the poem when I was about seven. I took two little boy neighbours to a local beauty spot, and we were out so long that our parents were on the verge of calling the police. “Oh, it’s all right” I said happily, “We’ve been up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen”.

I remember the National Song Book - full of stuff like Strawberry Fair and Green Grow the rushes o - but also assorted patriotic things like The British Grenadiers. And What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor!

And as other posters have said, Singing Together on the radio

And do you remember standing in the school hall waiting for the programmes to start? No recording equipment in schools in the early 50s I believe. So much easier now to download something from the internet. As long as the internet’s not down of course?

Did anyone ever sing "Abdul Abulbul Amir"? I still remember most of the words!
m.youtube.com/watch?v=o6vyZ_q-TjA

I rarely plough through 10 pages of comments on GN, but enjoyed reading all these posts. I have always loved singing, and am still in several choirs. It’s so sad that most of the lovely folk tunes are fading from peoples’ memories now, and are rarely heard. Thank you, everyone, for reviving happy memories. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could have a Gransnet Choir!
Aprilrose, your comment about being put off singing at school is true of so many people. So often I am told, “I have a terrible voice. I was told so at school” and it has stayed with them and stopped them from enjoying singing for the whole of their life. It makes me so angry and sad. If you like music join a Community Choir. You will be made welcome, no matter how little talent you may have, and you will improve with practice.
Phloembund. It’s strange that you mentioned the hymn “God is love” because we sang it a “loud, loud, loud” this morning, in church.

I must have gone to the wrong sort of school - John Brown’s Body, and She’ll be coming round the mountain, and Stewball was a Racehorse are the ones I remember best.

O’er the ocean flies a merry fae
Soft her wings are as a cloud of day
As she passes all the blue waves say
Marianina do not roam
Come and turn us into foam
Marianina Marianina
Come oh come and turn us into foam.

There are probably a few mistakes in the words, I’m going back about sixty years!
I still remember many of the songs we learned in primary school.

Singing together in my school - late 60s. No mention of Old Zip Coon yet (it couldn’t just be me) Another not very pc song but one I remember mostly. Disclaimer - I had to google it to get all the words ...

There once was a man with a double chin,
Who played with skill on a violin:
And he played in time and he played in tune,
But he never played anything but 'Old Zip Coon'.
'Old Zip Coon' he played all day,
Until he drove his friends away;
He played all night by the light of the moon
And wouldn't play anything but 'Old Zip Coon'.

Can anyone put me out of my misery. We used to sing a song called “Lovely Moon”. I don’t know the composer or if it was in a film but nobody else can remember it. The words are
Lovely moon my heart goes wandering
To a dreamland faraway
And I wish that I could follow you
Guided by your silver ray
Chorus
And I wish that
Oh I wish that
Yes I wish that I could follow you
To a dreamland far away.
I’ve searched google to no avail and I’m beginning to think that I dreamed it... except that I didn’t!!!

My favourites at assembly were
He Who Would Valiant Be (To be a Pilgrim)
When a Knight Won His Spurs

And I remember skipping round the hall singing ‘There was an old man called Michael Finnegan’

GrannyBeek : www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/fairies

eGJ thanks for the words.

aprilrose Hope you saw all the words another poster supplied.
When I sang ‘Grandfather’s Clock’ to my son, he’d be about 4 at the time. He said, ‘Did it really stop when he died, that's incredible!’ To children, all songs are true.

Urmstongran Dear wee children. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw-oRXq_rUI

Although I have said I don’t like music, I DO like singing, or used to.
I've sung in folk clubs up and down the UK and NZ and nearly always it’s been the old songs:
Barbara Allen; Linden Lea; Ash Grove, Last Rose of Summer; Sweet Nightingale; AshGrove; Wild Mountain Thyme.

When I came back to New Zealand I started a folk music club and also attended Auckland Folk Festival for over 20 years as a singer and volunteer worker and these old song are still sung and kept alive.
www.mudcat.org (good site for folk lyrics and some tunes)

I attended a workshops in which it was explained that many of the innocent sounding lyrics were actually, if you knew the code, quite racy. Also, the meanings of oak, ash and ivy in folk songs are not what they first seem.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Nightingale

When a knight won his spurs was written by Jan Struther of Mrs Miniver fame.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Struther (a sad little entry)

BuffyBee www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdxTrHDySOM

When we sang this at school, we alternated, boys and girls.
Girls: Jacky boy
Boys: Master?
Girls: Sing ‘ee well
Boys: Very well.

Grandma70 I chose 'My Song is Love Unknown' when I was baptised at 18. It always makes me cry.

Anxiousgran Many years ago I was told that sailors wore gold rings in their ears as that represented ‘ready money’ in any part of the world. How true this is I don’t know.

Recently, I was asked by my Maori group to sing a song from my home area and fond as I am of Yorkshire, just couldn’t bring myself to sing ‘On Ikley Moor Bah’t ‘at’ - a song about cannibalism.

Farview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=izsFt76fNfw

Saggi
Did you go to a religious based school perhaps Bradford Lass
Not until I was 11 and transferred from primary but in those days, it was accepted that if you weren’t Jewish, you were automatically a Christian and all of life, including school, was permeated by this assumption.

Grandma2213 www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4pVu1BnSv4

I also loved, ‘Little lamb who made thee?’ poets.org/poem/lamb

EllanVannin Daffyd y Garreg Wen: This is the most beautiful version – it’s a song I’ve sung many times...but certainly never as well as this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBm9uG51YmQ

Dogsmother And we’re bound for Botany Bay…..another favourite. I love shanties but traditionally women don't sing them. Some do of course nowadays but I was content to sing along rather than add them to the repertoire.

The keeper did a’shooting go. And under his cloak he carried a bow. All for to shoot at a merry little doe. Among the leaves so green o. Jacky boy. master. Sing ye we well. Very well. Hey down ho down. Derry Derry down. Among the leaves so green o.

Lots of hymns as we had assembly every day, many mentioned here, the words, in the main, of which have stayed with me. All things bright and beautiful, Onward Cristian soldiers that we sang when the primary school took over the veranda classrooms which had previously been used by the secondary level children. The head teacher pointed at the snow covered pit heap and compared them to mountains, called for us to be inspired (but they’re just pit heaps ,Miss). Lots of folk songs, Oh no John, verse sung by the boys, chorus by the girls, Blaydon races, Dance to your Daddy. I also remember the radio broadcasts. There was one that told stories and introduced me to St James’ air which I thought was a much better alternative for The Lord is my shepherd’, so much brighter than the traditional theme. Happy days.

Jesus want's me for a sunbeam!

Love this thread! I remember so many of these. Does anyone on here remember learning a winter poem which begins "I never know which way to go when all the world is white with snow, I do not like to make a track not even to the shed and back". Later on there's something about winter tress and "millions of albino bees" .
We woke up to snow this morning and I've been chatting to some friends and family in Messenger and I'm the only one who remembers this apparently and I'm beginning to think I'm going mad!

I was curious about the origin of the The Big Ship Sails down the Ally Ally o
and found that Ally o was slang for Atlantic Ocean around the Manchester and Liverpool docks.
The song refers to the sinking of the steamship Arctic en route from New York to Liverpool on the 27th September 1854 with the loss of 350 lives.
I can also remember playing the ‘Thread the Needle’ game, to this song, when I was a child.

Incy wincy spider climbing up the spout
Down came the raindrops and washed the spider out
Out came the sunshine, dried up all the rain
Incy wincy spider climber up the spout again.

Plaid Wrecsan;
(Alan Rees)

Taffy is a Welshman
Taffy is no thief
Someone came to Taffy's house
and stole a leg of beef.

Taffy made no protest
for he doesn't like a row
so the someone called on him again
and stole the bloody cow

and so on for 13 verses!
Of course, our schoolyard version would be politically incorrect these days.