Digital Tradition Mirror

Oh for Me Grog (2)

(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

Oh for Me Grog (2)

cho: Oh for me grog  my jolly jolly grog
     Oh for me beer and tobacco
     Well I spent all my tin in a shanty drinking gin
     Now across the Western Plain I must wander

I'm stiff stoney broke and I've parted with me moke
And the sky is looking black as flaming thunder
And the shanty boss is too for I haven't got a sou
That's the way you're treated when you're down and under

Well I'm crook in the head for I haven't been to bed
Since first I touched this shanty with my plunder
I see centipedes and snakes, and I'm full of pains and aches
So I'd better make a push out over yonder

I'll take that Old Man Plain and I'll cross it once again
Until me eyes the track no longer see boys
 And my beer and whisky brain looks for sleep but all in vain
And I feel as if I had the Darling Pea boys

So hang that blasted grog, that hocussed shanty grog
And the beer that's loaded with tobacco
Grafting humour I am in and I'll stick the peg right in
And I'll settle down once more for some hard yakka

First printed in the Bulletin  in May 1916.
Reworked from a sailor's song 'Noggin Boots' or 'Across the Western Ocean'

This version from the singing of A.L.Lloyd who writes "Sung straight the
song never seemed to me wildly exiting, but once I heard a drunken shearer
named White sing it on a station near Bethungra NSW, in a way that would
make the hair stand on end." MG

MG
oct96                                       apr96

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!