You can’t get many pimples on a pound of pickled pork

LyricsFred TerryMusicFred TerryRoud IndexRN21953
Pub1914
Music Hall performersErnie Mayne
Folk performancesSource singers
Jim Copper, 1936, Sussex, England
Emily Howe and Elsie Jaggard, 1964/65, Suffolk, England
George Spicer, 1972, Sussex, England
Bob Copper, 1992, Sussex, England
 
 I've been sent out by the missis just to do a bit of shopping
 In every blessed shop for pickled pork have I been popping
 I've been in Dansy's hat-shop, but the wife don't want a bonnet
 She wants a pound of pickled pork with lots of pimples on it.

 You can't get many pimples on a pound of pickled pork
 Whether it comes from China, Japan or Carolina
 You can go to Pimlico, Chicago or New York
 But, you can't get many pimples on a pound of pickled pork.

 I stood listening down the street at several suffragettes a-shouting
 I raised me hat and flapped me hands each time they started spouting
 At last I said to one old girl, all thoughts of black eyes scorning
 'Now you can get a vote, then get a man, then get let out next morning.'

 When I started out this morning I had sixpence wrapped in paper
 I've only got three-halfpence now, the rest has gone in vapour
 When I get home I'm sure the wife will start her crockery flinging
 It's ten to one she'll kill me, then I'll hear the angels singing

Ernie Mayne (1871-1937) – born in Devon but lived but lived in London most of his life. It’s hard to find out much about him, but he was a larger than life comic with a number of novelty songs – including Where do flies go in winter time, I never wronged an onion, and Lloyd George’s Beer. He also sang What do you think of that? which was reversioned by Lonnie Donegan into My old man’s a Dustman.

I first heard the chorus of this song by sung in Sheffield by Jim McDonald and I had to find the verses. When I sing it I tend to miss out the verse about the suffragette and replace “Mrs” in the other verses with “mother” in an attempt to minimise the routine sexism which reflects the time that the song was written. We all have our red lines, and there is a long tradition of modifying songs to make them fit more closely to the sensibilities of the time…

The song was first published in 1914, and is another example of early 20th century Music Hall songs remembered in the pub singaround’s of south-east England in the 1950s and 60s.

Sources:

Last Updated on October 31, 2020 by John Baxter | Published: December 8, 2019

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