Digital Tradition Mirror

Cod Liver Ile

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Cod Liver Ile

I'm a young married man that is tired in life,
Ten years I've been wed to a sickly wife;
She does nothing all day but sit down and cry,
A-wishing to God that she could die.

A friend of me own came to see me one day
And said that me wife was a-fadin' away.
He afterwards told me that she would get strong
If I got her a bottle from Doctor Dearjohn.

I bought her one bottle, 'twas just for to try,
And the way that she drank it you'd swear she was dry,
I bought her another which vanished the same,
Till I think she's got cod liver ile on the brain.

chorus:
     "Oh, doctor, oh, doctor, oh, dear Doctor John,
     Your cod liver ile is so pure and so strong
     I'm afraid to me life I'll go down in the sile
     If me wife don't quit drinking your cod liver ile."

She likes it so much that there is no doubt
Me wife she got fat and terrible stout,
And when she got stout, of course, she got strong,
And then I got jealous of Doctor Dearjohn.

Me house it resembles a big doctor's shop
With bottles and bottles and bottles on top,
And then in the morning when the kettle does bile
I'll swear it be singing of cod liver ile.

From Burl Ives
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!