Digital Tradition Mirror

The Welly Boot Song

(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

The Welly Boot Song
(McEwen)

Wellies they are wonderful, oh wellies they are swell,
Cause they keep oot the water, an' they keep in the smell,
An' when yer sittin in a room, you can always tell,
When some bugger takes off his wellies.

    If it wasna for your wellies where would you be?
    You'd be in the hospital or infirmary,
    Cause you would have a dose of the flu or even pluracy,
    If you didna have your feet in your wellies!

But when yer oot walking, in the country way about
An yer strolling over fields just like a fairmer's herd.
And somebody shouts "Keep aff the grass," and you think "How absurd;"
And, squelch, you find why fairmers a' wear wellies.

   Chorus

There's fishermen and firemen, there's farmers an a',
Men oot digging ditches an' working in the snaw;
This country it would grind tae a halt and no' a thing would graw
If it wasna for the workers in their wellies.

   Chorus

Noo Edward Heath and Wilson, they havna made a hit,
They're ruining this country, mair than just a bit,
If they keep on the way they are goin', we'll all be in the sh..,
So you'd be'er ge(t) your feet in your wellies.

  Chorus


Tune: "The Work of the Weavers."
Recorded by Billy Connolly on _Cop yer whack for this_; Polydor (1974).
Note: Connolly remarks:
     I'd like now to sing a song about Scottish Highland national dress...
Wellington boots.  Did you think it was the kilt?  Edinburgh's the only
place you see kilts, really. Teuchters wear wellies. And the welly is a
great, great form of clothing.  It used to be the great mark of poverty
in Partick: wellies in the summer.
     And when you're lying on the beach in Spain trying to let on you're a
millionaire... wi' a four bob cigar an a seven bob bottle of champaign.
You're found oot to be working class cause you've got welly marks on yer
legs.  Two rings of No Confidence

[teuchter=stranger...in this case "highlanders"]
[Partick=a working class section of Glasgow]
AJS

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!