Folk and Traditional Song Lyrics:
Nell

Nell

Nell

Nell was a collier's daughter,
  Innocent, sweet seventeen,
Shall I tell you the story of Nellie?,
  Yes tell us it Bill if it's clean.

Nell was a collier's daughter
  With a coal-black daddy so fine
At the close of the day to the theatre he'd stray,
  To forget the dark toil of the mine
Once he sat in the gallery with some of the lads,
 They started to quarrel a bit
It wasn't his shift, but they gave him a lift,
  And the collier went down to the pit

Years have rolled on since that happened,
  Time soothed the widows pain,
One morning she met a diver
  And the girl's mother married again.

Nell was a divers daughter,
  He used to dive under the ships
He'd walk on the bed of the ocean
  And tread on the fishes, and chips.
But the mother and he could never agree,
  And they quarreled for hours and hours
Once he called her a dog so she picked up his clog,
  And then came a coach filled with flowers.

Years have rolled on since that happened,
  Time soothed the widows pain,
One morning she met a plumber
  And the girl's mother married again.

Nell was a plumber's daughter,
  Aye Nell was a plumber's lass
She ran like mad for to fetch her dad
  When she smelt an escape of gas
Dad went upstairs with a lighted match
  Singing "Granny's Song at Twilight"
We heard a crack, and dad came back,
  Through the next door neighbour's skylight.

Years have rolled on since that happened,
  Time soothed the widows pain,
One morning she met a baker
  And the girl's mother married again.

Nell was a baker's daughter,
  A loafer from way down east,
And as sure as the sun used to sink in the west,
  His bread used to rise with the yeast
He sat down once on a cooking stove
  That could have been much colder,
But he got three stripes for his bravery,
  A long way from his shoulder.

Then Nell fell in love with a sailor
  And married a jolly jack tar.
He had eyes of blue, he was sixty-two,
  But you know what sailors are.
He'd a son called John who was twenty-one
  And it's very strange to say
He fell in love with Nell's mother,
  And married her right away.

Now Nell is her mother's new mother,
  Her father becomes her own son
Her mothers first child is her father-in-law,
  And her daughter's a son of a gun.
The mothers first cousin looks after Nell's child,
  They found on the day of its birth
That its uncle's step-sister's its grandmother's aunt,
  And I'm the biggest liar on earth.

From Billy Bennett
AG
apr97