> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > Shickered As He Could Be

Shickered As He Could Be

[ Roud 114 ; Child 274 ; Ballad Index C274 ; trad.]

Shickered As He Could Be is an Australian variant of the well-known comic song Four Nights Drunk. A.L. Lloyd sang it in 1966 on his album First Person; he was accompanied by Alf Edwards on concertina and Dave Swarbrick playing fiddle. This is one of two tracks from this album that has never been reissued on CD. Lloyd commented in the album's sleeve notes:

What ancient tale of trickery and revenge lies behind this jokey song, common all over Europe and turning up frequently in America and Australia. In the ballad books it's called Our Goodman, but singers usually give it some such title as Five Nights Drunk. In Australia, “shickered” means drunk; the term comes from Yiddish. A man comes home to find another man's horse, sword, cloak, etc. where his should be. Like an epic hero he asks in formular fashion: Whose horse is this? Whose sword? Whose cloak? Each time the adulterous wife insists that his eyes deceive him, and that the objects are really a cow, a spit, a bed-sheet, etc. Only at the end of the ballad does the husband's rival appear, as the head on the pillow. No struggle takes place; there is no retribution; a joke's a joke and that's that. Yet somehow in the form and athmosphere of the song, there's a sense of something beyond the joke, something that suggests important things had happened before the song begins and that perhaps terrible events may occur after the song has ended. What is now a comic song may be but a portion of another ballad, an old and tragic tale of adultery and revenge, whose most formal, most memorable passage has broken off and now lives on as a burlesque. The Australian version here is brief, cut to the bone, shorn of its “classical” trimmings of horse and cow, cloak and bed-sheet, etc., but aquiring native accessoires of stockwhip and mousing-snake. The latter may need explanation: In parts of the outback, mice are plentiful but cats are few. So some people take snakes as household pets, to keep the mice down; they snuggle in comfort, drink milk from a saucer, work by night.

Lyrics

A bloke I know came rolling home as shickered as he could be,
He saw a pair of riding boots where his boots ought to be.
And he said, “Oh wife, my darling wife, now come and tell to me,
Whose are those boots there under the bed where my boots ought to be?”
She said, “You damned fool, you are a fool, and can't you plainly see?
It's nothing but a pair of German dogs my momma she sent to me.”
“Well all the miles I travelled in a million miles or more,
And gooseneck spurs on a German dog I never saw before.”

This bloke I know came rolling home as shickered as he could be,
He saw a stockwhip on the wall where his stockwhip should be.
And he said, “Oh wife, my darling wife, now come and tell to me,
Whose is that twelve-foot stockwhip there where my stockwhip should be?”
She said, “You damned fool, you are a fool, and can't you plainly see?
It's nothing but a mousing-snake my momma she sent to me.”
“Well all the miles I travelled in a million miles or more,
And a cracker on the tail of a mousing-snake I never saw before.”

This bloke I know came rolling home as shickered as he could be,
He saw a head there in the bed where his head ought to be.
And he said, “Oh wife, my darling wife, now come and tell to me,
Whose is this head here in the bed where my old head should be?”
She said, “You damned fool, you are a fool, and can't you plainly see?
It's only my pommy serving girl my momma she sent to me.”
“Well all the miles I travelled in a million miles or more,
Ginger whiskers on a pommy girl I never saw before.”

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Reinhard Zierke.