OK – here is a strange one for you. This is a thing we used to sing as kids: weird, slightly profane, odd – it’s the kind of Americana I’m thinking was started on a chain gang decades ago and just was handed down. I Googled the words, but didn’t find any links to a source for it, so it may be more obscure than I thought. We sang this so many times, it’s no wonder I haven’t forgotten it. I think the Dropkick Murphys should put this lyric to a song. That might be something.
At any rate, here it is, doggerel from the playgrounds of my youth, in the 1960s. Let’s call this, simply, “Three Dirty Men.” As you read it, give it a little sing-songy lilt. Here it goes:
Three dirty men, three dirty men
Were digging in a ditch,
One said to the other man
You dirty son of a
Peter Murphy had a dog
And a very fine dog was he.
He gave it to a country girl
To keep it company.
She fed him, she fed him
She taught him how to jump.
One day he jumped on her
And bit her in a
Country boy from Germany
Was sitting on a rock.
Along came a bumblebee
And stung him in the
Cocktails, ginger ale
Five cents a glass.
If you don’t like this
Shove it up your
Ask me no questions
And I’ll tell you no lies.
If a bucket of shit falls on you
Be sure to close your eyes.
Were digging in a ditch,
One said to the other man
You dirty son of a
Peter Murphy had a dog
And a very fine dog was he.
He gave it to a country girl
To keep it company.
She fed him, she fed him
She taught him how to jump.
One day he jumped on her
And bit her in a
Country boy from Germany
Was sitting on a rock.
Along came a bumblebee
And stung him in the
Cocktails, ginger ale
Five cents a glass.
If you don’t like this
Shove it up your
Ask me no questions
And I’ll tell you no lies.
If a bucket of shit falls on you
Be sure to close your eyes.
Oy! If anybody, anywhere, has a theory on where such a poem would come from, we’d love to hear it.
