Words: Stan Kelly & Eric Winter;
Tune: Traditional (Fourpence a Day)
©1961 Heathside Music
The rain is falling on the side, the tea's up on the brew.
We're sitting on our arse-holes with bugger-all to do.
Outside our picks and shovels, lads, they slowly rust away.
We're rained off and contented on four pounds a day.
It's early in the morning we start at ten o'clock
We search the skies impatiently. Bejays! I felt a drop.
The can lads are on bonus and each brew means better pay.
We're rained off and contented on four pounds a day.
So Freddie got the cards out, the racing page as well
And as for the contractors we hope they go to hell.
It looks as if the rain's set in we sha'n't do much today.
What matter if on Friday we all draw out pay?
Some singers have been known to use this last verse as a chorus:
Four QUID a day, me lads, and bugger-all to do;
No trouble from the foreman -- he's in the union too.
Some want the rain to go to Spain, we want the rain to stay.
We're rained off and contented on four pounds a day.
Notes
While I was waiting for the start of my first university term, I
took a job on a building site with a Cambridge firm. We were
building the Cambridge University Engineering Laboratories and at
the end of the first week I drew twenty quid odd -- including
overtime. Twenty quid a week -- four pounds a day -- it seemed a
long way fron the fourpence a day earned by the lads who did
child labour in the mines. It made think that some of the old
industrial ballads are not as true now as they once were.
Several times, I've been told that this song is "anti working-class"
and "an affront to the dignity of labour." I can only say
"Honest, I didn't mean it to be" -- and the lads on the building
site loved it. Eric Winter, who liked the song right from the
start, wrote the third verse.
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