Digital Tradition Mirror

Boring for Oil

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Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Boring for Oil

One morning in a ramble I met this fair maid
So handsome and lovely, and to her I said,
"For all of my fortune I'm willing to toil
If you show me the place to go boring for oil"

The fair maid she stammered, "Young man, I declare
I know where that place is, and watch it with care.
And no one has seen it since I was a child
And if you go there you shall surely find oil."

"Fain," say I to myself,"My fortune is made.
If you show me that place now I'll see you're repaid"
She hoisted her garments for me to see all
And she showed me the place to go boring for oil.

I thanked that fair maiden a hundred times o'er,
And I bade her be seated on nature's green shore,
She screamed and she hollered, and tried to recoil
When I pulled out Old Satan, and went boring for oil.

We had not bored long, when the maid cried "Go slow!"
And the oil from her oiler then gently did flow;
She screamed and she hollered, my character to soil
"You've broken my bladder a-boring for oil!"

combined version from Folk Songs of Wisconson (Peters) and R.
 Greenhaus' memory of a misguided childhood.
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!