What songs did you sing at Primary School?

[KurriKurri]

I don't mean playground songs, I mean the sort of thing you'd sing as a class?

This morning I was trying to remember the words to In the Fields in Frost and Snow, and wikkied them here

In the Fields in Frost and Snows,
Watching late and early;
There I keep my Father's Cows,
There I Milk 'em Yearly:
Booing here, Booing there,
Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo,
We defy all Care and Strife,
In a Charming Country-Life.

Obviously a kind of old version of Old Macdonald. I went to school in the 60's we also sang one about a tiger 'prowling round the forest while the nights were dark and wild' and 'Bessie was a Black cat as old as the house'.

And one which went

'The ladybird and the centipede got married,
the ladybird and the centipede they wed,
on their wedding night I've heard it said,
fifty one pairs of slippers were by their bed,
the ladybird and the centipede - something something (forgotten)'

My headmaster was a great pianist and loved music, and we had singing everyday first thing, and entered lots of festivals etc. I loved it.

Does anyone else have any favourites they remember?

Galena I was wondering if anyone else would mention Little boxes. I asked my DH if he knew it a few weeks ago and he looked at me like I this and said why would any school teach kids that. I think it was our Drama teacher who taught it to us who fancied himself as a bit of a hippy/non conformist

This has brought back so many memories, particularly of the blue hymn books, Singing Together on the radio and Brownie campfires.

When a Knight Won His Spurs is one of my favourite ever hymns and I'm embarrassed to admit to knowing all of the words:

When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold
With a shield on his arm and a sword in his hand
For God and for valour he rode through the land

No shield have I and no sword by my side
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride
Though back into storyland giants have fled
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed
And let me set free with the sword of my youth
From the castle of darkness, the power of truth

At my DD's Leaver's Assembly they always sing One More Step Along the World I Go which has me in floods every time - she's actually leaving herself this year and I am going to be a wreck!

Another one I heard recently (at DD's Brownie get-togther) that I hadn't thought of for years was Land of the Silver Birch which is lovely. Sure my eclectic folk/country-based musical tastes must stem from those days!

We had a very "modern" collection of songs about animals - in the 1960s. The only one I can remember was something like

Nothing could be fleeter than the slinky cheetah
Nothing could be fleeter than the slinky, slinky cheeeeeeetah!
He can run
To catch his prey
At sixty miles an hour they saaaaaaay

We also sang Mango walk, in really strange accents

dd1 sang (chanted?) a good song at primary (15 years ago) which was the same verse repeated in different voices

Fried ham, fried ham
Cheese and bologna
after the macaroni
We?ll have onions and pickles and more fried ham, fried ham

second verse , same as the first, opera talk and a whole lot worse...
third verse, same as the first, cowboy talk and a whole lot worse...
fourth verse , same as the first, baby talk and a whole lot worse...
fifth verse, same as the first, alien talk and a whole lot worse...
sixth verse , same as the first, whisper talk and a whole lot worse...
seventh verse, same as the first, noisy talk and a whole lot worse...

The whole school would do it in assembly, led by a hugely enthusiastic teacher and by the end the noise was amazing - lovely memory!

Mud, mud glorious mud.

Lily the Pink.

After the ball was over.

Clementine.

Psammead- we did the litter song too! (I hated it )
Wonder if you went to my school as you're the only other person to mention the dinosaur song...?

kurrikurri- great thread!

judy- thanks for quinoro link...

We did the fox/grey goose song too.

piprabbit - we sang Clementine in Latin at secondary school (actually we sang quite a lot of things in latin!)

O divina, Clementina
O meae deliciciae
Periisti, occidisti,
Inde meae lacrimae

That was the jist of it - I've probably got the spellings all wrong, its a long time since I did latin

Latin - I'm very impressed.

There was one we sang at infants school that started 'At half past three we go home to tea, or maybe a quarter to four'. I used to love that one. And I'd forgotten 'When a knight won his spurs' - this thread has brought that one back to me! I also remember our headmaster used to teach us to sing 'Little Jack Horner' but we would sing it in a round - I liked that so was always pleased when he took the music assemblies! Other than those, I remember learning 'Jamaica Farewell' for a summer concert in my last year of juniors.

We sang 'we come together to read and white and something about black & white', something about 'water of the world', 'climbing jesus ladder', 'sing hosanna,' 'lord of the dance' 'morning has broken'

Round singing was fun, we used to do one in a round that went

'Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,
We'll never see him more,
he used to wear a long brown coat,
That went down to the floor'

We also used to have some people singing a descant in some of the songs.

Also wide usage of instruments - recorders, triangles, maraccas, - and everyone was desperate to be the one chosen to play the Glockenspiel.

Just found loads of information on the Singing Together programmes on the Folkinfo.org site.

Found this song Land of the Sliver Birch which I remember very very clearly. WOOOSH straight back to my classroom, sitting cross-legged, clutching our booklets and singing along.

That's a great site piprabbit - its got loads there I know but had totally forgotten. Just found the 'Drummer and the Cook' - 'with one eye on the pot and the other up the chimney' love that line

LemonEmma There was one we sang at infants school that started 'At half past three we go home to tea, or maybe a quarter to four'.

Wow, great thread and LemonEmma that song just came rushing back, used to like that one!
At half past 3 we go home for tea or maybe at quarter to four. And ten pairs of feet go running down the street and in at our own front door. And it's rough and tumble, rattle and noise, mother and father, girl and boy, baby in the carrycot, cat by the stove a little bit of quarrelling a lot of love!'
Blimey can't believe I remember all that when it was about 25 years ago since I last sang it!

This thread is great. Have just been educating my dc about songs like Puff the Magic Dragon, The ink is black, the page is white, Catch A Falling Star, I can sing a rainbow ....they're being brought up in Germany so they were missing out on some of this esential 'background' of their heritage!

Poor dc, made them sit through the Royal Wedding for exact same reason! They've both gone to hide in their rooms.

Pipeabit - I remember Land of the Silver Birch

only I think the refrain went boom titti ah di boom titti ah di boom titti ah di boom

Another Land of the Silver Birch memory here... and I remember the chorus as 'Hi-ya-ya-hi-ya' as in the music piprabbit found.

Great thread! I remember a lot of the Singing Together songs - my mum was a primary school teacher and brought the booklets home, so I got several years of them, not just the 4 years I was in junior school myself. @KurriKurri "We sang something, which I think was probably from sing together or similar which went 'Will you come to my castle matta rilly rilly rilly, wil you come to my castle matta rilly rilly ron' - google hasn't heard of it, but I don't think I've made it up" - I too remember something like that, except the words I've got in my head are more like "O my castle fine, tirra lirra tirra lirra, o my castle fine, tirra lirra tirra lay" but Google hasn't heard of that either. Seem to remember that the tune was a bit like the French , but maybe not. Also have a vague memory that it was translated from Czech (Singing Together seemed to include one foreign song each term) which means that it's probably out there on the internet somewhere but impossible to google for unless you can make an inspired guess at the Czech original.

LongWayRound - the tune is very like your link, - I'm so pleased you remember something similar - and I'm not me losing even more of my marbles

Glad you think the tune is similar - I'm not very musical, and I was afraid it might turn out to be nothing like the song you remember!

longwayround- is it Toura loura ay?

ChateauRouge - it might be, if you added in a couple more syllables. Do the words/possible tune sound familiar to you?

'There was rats, rats, big as blooming cats in the stores, in the stores;

There was rats, rats, big as blooming cats in the quarter master's stores;

I am so blind I can not see, I have not brought my specs with me, I have not brought my specs with me'

Or something like that

We sand loads from Come and Praise, too.

'give me oil in my lamp' and 'autumn days' still stick with me!

I also remember my teacher playing songs on the piano from a brown book with what I think were goldfish on.

I'd love to find that book - so many happy memories

I clearly remember the Singing Together songs. I think there was one particular booklet that had songs from around the world or a song for every country type thing.

'Land of the Silver Birch - home of the beaver.....'

'From Lucerne to the Wegas Blue, hol-diri-diya, hol-diri-diya,
You may go without a shoe, hol-diri-diya, hol-di-ya!'

'Antonio, Antonio, it's raining - it's raining again'

'Down from the hills of Brecon - flew a hungry heron,
In a barrel he bumped his head, and he said,
Apples I've struck my neck on'

'From beyond the wooded island,
to the river wide and free,
Proudly sail the arrow breasted
Ships of Cossack Yeomanry'

and a 'dirge' like one that was supposedly about the Irish potato famine,

'Oh the praities they grow small - over here, over here,
And we eat them skins and all, over here, over here'

of all the lovely Irish folk songs they chose that monstrosity!

Longwayround- there is a song 'Toura Loura Loura'- it's Irish I think... Bing Crosby did a version though too.

I found this too:
""Toura Loura" is just a type of lilting...nonsense words that are meant to mimic the sounds of instruments, used in a lot of Irish and Scottish traditional music. Same idea as the "whack fol the diddles" and "musha riggum durum das" you'll find in a lot of Irish songs.

Lilting in songs is more or less the Irish version of "tra la la," but on its own, it's quite an art form in its own right. My Irish teacher says that, when she was a schoolgirl, all the girls used to take turns lilting for the other girls to dance to on the playground. "

But the phrase 'Tirra Lirra' is actually from 'The Lady of Shallot" by Tennyson, so I'm wondering if it's a song about the Lady of Shallot, considering a castle is also mentioned? The Tirra Lirra in the poem though is a reference to Shakespeare's Winters Tale.

Flying fig- isn't that ApusskiDusski? (they were sardines...)