All the girls are busy knitting jumpers

AKAThe Jumper Song
First Published1919

Writer/composerWeston and LeeRoudRN23895

Music Hall PerformersWill Evans
Folk performancesSource Singers
Pritchard, Howard 1962 England : Gloucestershire
Chappell, Bill 1970 England : Lincolnshire
As transcribed on GlosTrad site 
 
 Now Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool? 
 Yes sir, yes sir, I’ve three bags full. 
 Then give me your ’ot un let your mutton go bare, 
 For all the girls are busy knit ting jumpers ev’ry where. 
 And there ain’t one that’s worth three and six as a rule, 
 It takes ten pairs of needles and two tons of wool. 
  
 But all the girls they’re busy knitting jumpers, 
 Busy knitting jumpers all day long. 
 Can’t you hear the jumper girls saying 
 "First two plain and then two purl, 
 Knit one slip one, make a stitch and drop one." 
 Leave the needles in the chair, 
 So that Pa with the hump’s got to do the jumpers’ jump. 
 Shouting "Jumpers, jumpers, jumpers ev’ry where!"
  
 Miss Jane Jones had jumpers on the brain
 Her young man said "Wed me, Jane"
 Said Jane "You must wait ’till my jumper’s done, Jack."
 He went away for seven years but when he came back
 She was still saying "Two plain" and Jack said "Ta ta."
 You keep saying two plain and by gosh you are."
  
 Now in the trams and buses they’ll sit,
 And they knit, knit, knit, knit knit, knit, knit.
 They purchase the wool at a guinea a pound,
 And they gets a lot of little holes and puts the wool around.
 At ninepence a stitch, jumpers cost quite a lot,
 And the little holes between ’em cost God knows what!
   

A song from the 1920s , remembered by traditional singers 40 or 50 years later.

After the Great War there was a craze in the UK for knitting, apparently people stopped knitting for the troops, and started knitting for themselves. This song was written by the prolific Weston and Lee, and was sung in the pantomime Cinderella by Will Evans. The performance apparently involved a chorus line of men in drag knitting in time to the song. (See also Lloyd George of Criccieth )

You can hear Howard Pritchett sing it here on the Glostrad site

Will Evans sings it himself:

Sources:

  • Entries in the Roud Indexes at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library: https://archives.vwml.org/search/all:single[folksong-broadside-books]/0_50/all/score_desc/extended-roudNo_tr%3A23895
  • Kilgarrif Sing Us
  • Lyrics and transcribed sheet music: Glostrad
  • Roger Baker: Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts (1995)

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