BREAD AND MARMALADE
(Will Terry / Frank Wood / Worton David 1915)

as recorded by Sam Mayo
1915


Some years ago when I was mother’s baby,
For bread and marmalade I had a craze.
In fact, I got so fond of it that really
I always have some with me nowadays.
Last night I spooned with a girl named Jane Louise,
And as we sat beneath some shady trees,
She sighed and murmured, “Darling, give me something 
As a token that your love will never fade,
Just something I can put inside me chest, dear,”
So I gave her me bread and marmalade!

Poor father, he was taken ill one evening,
We knew not what to give him for the best.
We hadn’t got a single drop of brandy,
So I made a mustard plaster for his chest.
I crept up to his bedroom late at night,
And smacked it on his chest with all me might.
When Father jumped from bed and shouted “Murder!”,
The temper of a tiger he displayed,
For in mistake, on father’s little mary
I’d stuck me slice of bread and marmalade!

I once was in a smash-up on the railway,
To me it was a bit beyond a joke.
For half an hour there I lay unconscious,
Until I smelt some whisky, then I woke.
I crawled a yard or two along the ground,
But not a sign of anyone I found.
At last I clutched at something in the darkness,
And then a sweet voice cried out from the shade,
“How dare you pinch me leg!”   I said, “I’m sorry,
I thought it was me bread and marmalade!”

Like every Englishman, I’m patriotic;
I went to see a tattooed girl today.
Upon her form she had the map of Europe,
Tattooed in different colours, by the way.
She’d France and Belgium there in green and black,
And good old England tattooed on her back.
I looked at her and shouted, “Rule Britannia!”,
And as me Union Jack I had mislaid,
Right on the part where she’d got “German Empire",
I slapped me slice of bread and marmalade!




(Transcribed by Peter Akers - January 2017)