Down below

Lyrics

Sydney Carter

Music

Sydney Carter

Roud

V53400

When you're working in the dark, down below
Underneath St James's Park, down below
When you're working in the dark, 
Oh, it isn't half a lark
When you're working in the dark, down below.

It isn't hard to tell, down below
If its Bow or Clerkenwell, down below
For Bow and Clerkenwell
Have a different kind of smell
And we know it very well, down below.

Over Covent Garden way, down below
In the merry month of May, down below
The fragrance of the flowers
Gives us many happy hours
And we sing a round-e-lay, down below.

The objects that we find, down below
Help to entertain the mind, down below
There are watches we can't wind
Wrapped up in bacon rind
And that isn't all you find, down below.

When you're under Floral Street, down below
With the water round your feet, down below
'Mid the cabbages and beat
You may find a marguerite
And the thought is very sweet, down below.

Hatton Garden is a spot, down below
Where we like to go a lot, down below
Since a bloke in Leather Lane
Dropped a diamond down the drain
We've been waiting but in vain, down below.

When to Billingsgate we come, down below
When to Billingsgate we come, down below
When to Billingsgate we come, 
Then things begin to hum
And we wish we'd never come, down below.

There is something in a sewer, down below
That has a strange allure, down below
The magic of the drain
Is a thing you can't explain
But it's calling us again Down Below.

Sidney Carter, historian poet and folksinger widely known as the composer of the Lord of the Dance, worked as a lyricist for Donald Swann’s shows in the 1950s. This song was written in the 1950s and performed and recorded by Stanley Holloway, a key figure in the mid-20th century Music Hall revival.

Sources:

• Lyrics: From the singing of Graeme Knights and the recording below

Ian Wallace sings