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The Oggie Man

[Cyril Tawney]

Cyril Tawney wrote this song about a Cornish pasty seller in 1959. On Cyril Tawney in Depth, he describes the background of the song and how he came to write it. His own recordings of The Oggie Man can be found on the Electra LP A Cold Wind Blows: Songs in Traditional Styles (1966), on the Argo LP A Mayflower Garland (1970) and anthology The World of Folk (1971), and on his Neptune cassette Sally Free and Easy (1989); the latter was reissued on the CD Navy Cuts: The Songs of Cyril Tawney. A live recording from Holsteins folk club in Chicago on May 31, 1981 was published in 2007 on his CD Live at Holsteins.

Jon Boden sang The Oggie Man as the August 20, 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.

Lyrics

Well the rain's softly falling and the Oggie Man's no more;
I can't hear him calling like I used to before.
I came through the gateway and I heard the sergeant say,
“The big boys are coming, see their stand across the way.”
Yes the rain's softly falling and the Oggie Man's no more.

It was there that she told me when she bade me good bye,
“There's no one will miss you one half as much as I
My love will endure, dear, like a beacon in the squall
Eternal as that Oggie Man beneath the dockyard wall.”
Well the rain's softly falling and the Oggie Man's no more.