Words: Leon Rosselson & Stan Kelly;
Tune: Traditional (Nicky Tams)
© 1961 Heathside Music
Mixolydian mode on D -- Cynically
One afternoon in the month of June in nineteen-fifty-three,
We queued outside the Senate House for taking our degree.
Folks by the score were at the door to watch the great display,
And loving mums to see their sons on Graduation Day.
With hoods all line with rabbit fur and clerical bands so neat,
And four abreast we marched along parading down the street,
And people peered and people cheered and shouted: Hip-hooray,
We felt such bloody asses as they made us all BA's.
Pity the poor vice-chancellor, he's been there six hundred years,
Sitting in the same old chair and saying the same old prayers,
He's only fainted once you know, and to revive him then
They filled him with brandy and they wound him up again.
Me student are over now, me lovely hood I've sold,
Me gown's on the floor behind the door just keeping out the cold,
And I sometimes think when I've nowt to drink and I've spent all me pay
Of the intellectual fun and games of Graduation Day.
Notes
Leon and I both passed through the hallowed halls of Cambridge University
emerging with our precious BA's (Bachelor of Arts) in 1953. Note that the
"Arts" tag applies universally whether you "read" mathematics,
physics, geography (known as the soft option), or one of
the many classical and humanist subjects. As the purest of
pure mathematicians (art or science?), I had an additional
problem with the BA terminology: my bachelor status had ended five years
earlier -- indeed, we had three kids and a fourth on the way.
Leon and I did not collaborate folk-wise until after our graduations.
(Note: going down is the official term for leaving Cambridge
even if you move to Nepal.) We started sharing the floor at diverse
UK folkclubs in the late 1950s, which led to many joint festival,
recording, radio, and TV ventures. More at
Discography
Graduation Day reveals a quizzical aspect of the "contemporary" folksong
business: "Who wrote what and when?" Leon and I each sang this song
so often over the years, with the inevitable folk-process extemporizations
(also known as drunken lapses), that I cannot be sure if I contributed
meaningfully (as they say), or at all, to the above text.
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