Henry's Songbook

Blue Bleezin' Blind Drunk #1

• (Trad)

  Oh friends I have a sad story
  A very sad story to tell
  I married a man for his money
  But he's worse than the devil himsel'

  For when Micky comes home I get battered
  He batters me all black and blue
  And if I say a word I get scattered
  From the kitchen right ben to the room

  So I'll go and I'll get blue bleezin' blind drunk
  Just to give Micky a warning
  And just for to spite I will stay out all night
  And come rollin' home drunk in the mornin'

  O' whisky I ne'er was a lover
  But what can a puir woman do
  I'll go and I'll drown all my sorrows
  How I wish I could drown Micky too

  Repeat 3

  As sung by Belle Stewart

Blue Bleezin' Blind Drunk #2

• (Trad)

  
  Chorus:
  So I'll go and I'll get blue bleezin' blind drunk
  Just to give Micky a warning
  And just for to spite I'll stay out all night
  And come rollin' home drunk in the mornin'

  For friends I have a sad story
  A very sad story to tell
  I married a man for his money
  And he's worse than the devil himsel'

  For when Micky comes home in the evening
  He batters me all black and blue
  He knocks me about from the kitchen
  To the bedroom right through to the room

  Of whisky I ne'er was a lover
  But what can a poor woman do
  I'll go and I'll drown all my sorrows
  ButI wish I could drown Micky too

  As sung by Cilla Fisher & Artie Trezise

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

• [1979:] We first heard this song by Sheila Stewart at Kinross Festival a number of years ago. Cilla's brother Archie suggested she add it to her repertoire and we eventually picked up the words from an assistant at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. (Notes Cilla Fisher & Artie Trezise, 'Cilla & Artie')

• [1984:] Sheila MacGregor learned this song from her mother, Belle Stewart, who some thirty years ago heard an old ploughman sing it while tattie-lifting near Blairgowrie. His version started with v. 2 above ... so Belle made up the first verse herself and inserted it, partly as an opening to the song and partly to provide a reason, a provocation, for the man battering his wife, viz. she'd married him for his money. [...]

  Even today the age-old practice of wife-beating persists, and "The recent laws helping battered women ... do not apply here [i.e. in Scotland] limited though they are for England and Wales." I once heard a policeman say, when confronted with an injured wife (a total stranger, she had flung herself into my car to escape from her husband), "Of course we don't know what she did to annoy him". If comparable injuries had been inflicted in a fight between two men, the verdict would have been "grievous bodily harm" with no excuse of provocation. But sometimes the only way people can react to ugly facts is to joke about them, and [this] is obviously in this genre. [...]

  Jean Redpath comments that this is the only Scots song she knows of in which a woman is shown to be drinking: "... and this fact certainly doesn't reflect the truth!" (Munro, Revival 120)

• [1986:] As a commentary on the vicious circle drunkenness - wife beating - drunkenness, these three verses could scarcely be bettered. Perhaps their excellence is due to the fact that they lack the pious moralising tone which is the distinguishing mark of so many temperance songs. (MacColl/Seeger, Doomsday 253)