Let me ask you for campfire songs. Campfire songs: let me ask you for them.

[tzikeh]

Somehow, members of a chat room got into "omg remember that song you'd sing around the campfire at camp?!" and off we went.

So far we have remembered:

A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
Aiken Drum
All My Life's a Circle


Be Kind to Your Fine Feathered Friends
Big Blue Frog
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Blue-Tail Fly
Bringing Home a Baby Bumble-Bee
Camptown Races
Charlie on the MTA
Circle Game
Clementine
Day by Day
Do Your Ears Hang Low?
Don Gato
Erie Canal (the one with the mule, not the one where you won't get another drink til you get to Buffalo)
Found a Peanut
Freedom (from Shenadoah, with the whistle-break)
Fried Ham
Grandfather's Clock
Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts
Green Grow the Rushes Oh
Harrigan
He's Got the Whole World In His Hands
Ho Young Rider
Hole In the Bucket
I Had a Little Chicken
I Love My Rooster
Inch By Inch (The Garden Song)
I've Been Workin' on the Railroad
Jamaica Farewell
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Kookaburra
Kumbaya
Little Bunny Foo-Foo
Make New Friends
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
Oh Susanna
Old Grey Mare
On Top of Old Smoky
One Meatball
One Tin Soldier
Polly Wolly Doodle
Puff the Magic Dragon
Rise and Shine
Rock-a My Soul
Roll On Columbia
She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
Short'nin Bread
Sippin' Cider Through a Straw
Skip to My Lou
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Yay
Tavern in the Town
The Ants Go Marching
The Bear (The other day [the other day] I saw a bear [I saw a bear])
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
The Cat Came Back
The Streets of Laredo
The Worms Crawl In
There Was an Old Lady
This Land is Your Land
Titanic
Weave Me the Sunshine
Where Have All the Flowers Gone
You Are My Sunshine
Zum Gali Gali

Share your campfire songs! Share share share! Perhaps I will make a zip file of them all and share share share right back!

Comments

[southpaw526.livejournal.com]

I remember Kumbayah, and some of those songs where you all stood or sat in a circle and slapped hands.

[southpaw526.livejournal.com]

Oh, also -

The Circle Game, and Drinking Cider Through a Straw

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

Little Bunny Foo Foo.

[wolfling]

Down By the Bay (where the watermelons grow)

Land of the Silver Birch

Poor Little Bug

[ladysorka]

Johnny Verbeck. Oh, Johnny Verbeck. How we enjoyed singing about you turning all the neighbor's cats and dogs into meat as kids. Especially when your wife accidentally put you in the sausage machine.

Why are kids' songs so morbid?

[ladysorka]

Also, Hole in the Bucket.

[fantasmabob.livejournal.com]

It's cheese that makes the world go round

Hello, my name is joe

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

wow, I have absolutely no reference for these. Lyrics?

[athena4lynn.livejournal.com]

An Old Austrian Yodeller
Lula
Light The Wood
Make New Friends
My Aunt Gret
Black Socks
Tra La La
Kucaburra
Titanic (I was disturbed to find Brownie age children singing this. Weird)
When Suzie was a Brownie
It's a Small World

I could probably find a bunch more - I was skimming a listing I found here (http://www.weknowcampfiresongs.com/title-a.html) for songs I recognised. Cheating a little, I guess. Ahem.

[athena4lynn.livejournal.com]

Okay, so the reference to Joe up above reminded me of a couple of others.

Rufus Rustus, and the Chicken Song (sung together as a round)
A Boat Sailed from China

[itsthewa.livejournal.com]

There was a song about the Titanic. "Ooooh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue..." "It was saaad when the greeeat ship went down."

Looking back, the lively, happy tune it's sung to really clashes badly with the lyrics of people dying ("Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives"), but we didn't notice that at girl scout camp.

We sang Puff The Magic Dragon too, and If All Of The Raindrops Were Lemondrops And Gumdrops (I don't know the title to that, so I'm going to go with the opera convention of just using the first line).

We also sang White Choral Bells in a round. That's a pretty one.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Puff! Of course!

I never sang Titanic, but I am noticing a theme that several of these songs are really, really depressing. What was up with that!

[thevetia.livejournal.com]

At my girl scout camps not only did we sing Titanic, but also a song we called Rickity Tickty Tin. I was shocked to discover years later that it was actually Tom Lehrer's Irish Ballad. Ten year olds love doom and gore.

[lynnmonster.livejournal.com]

Sippin' Cider Through A Straw!

[(Anonymous)]

The first ransack of my memory produces:

Dona Dona ("On a wagon bound for market, there's a calf with a mournful eye...")
Ho, Young Rider ("Ho young rider, apple-cheeked one, whither riding?") Sung in a round. And when I later heard it on The Wild Wild West, it was like WHOAH flashback.
Canadian Wilderness ("The life of a voyager, that of a soujourner...")
Chocolate Chip Cookies ("Chocolate chip cookies, ya gotta have more...")
Rise and Shine ("Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody, floody...")
A Ram Sam Sam ("A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, gooli gooli gooli gooli ram sam sam...") A gesture song.

The first few of these are really lovely, kind of minor key and wistful, and I occasionally sing them in the shower to this day. Not a lot of call for campfires these days, alas.

Dorinda

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh, wouldn't it be fun to organize Fannish Campfires? They could take place on the same night in cities and towns all over. And we could make s'mores and sing songs and be fannish.

Except for the bugs, I really liked campfires.

[axiom_of_stripe]

here's the lyrics to a lot of the ones we sang when not fully supervised:

http://www.kayshapero.net/childish.htm

*grin*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

You don't have Sippin' Cider Through a Straw! Amazing.

The one and only time I went to a camp-out, we were mostly singing Jim Croce songs, though.

[bluerosefairy.livejournal.com]

Here's a couple I don't think you have:

- "All God's Creatures". Awesome song - we sung it a ton at Bear Creek (this Lutheran summer camp I went to for a couple years).
- "Sipping Cider". I remember being young and confused why you'd want to drink cider through a straw with a pretty girl.
- "Day by Day". From Godspell. I was such a dorky little theatre nerd I would yell at everyone who messed up the order of the lyrics.
- "Kookaburra". Though Doctor Who absolutely ruined this song for me in "Fear Her".
- "Riders in the Sky". We sung it at Bear Creek, but not Girl Scout Camp. My father taught me this song before I'd gone to camp, and I used to scare all the girls in my bunk with it.
- "Irish Blessing". You know it. "May the road rise to meet you/may the wind be always at your back . . .".
- "Jamaica Farewell". But only the first two verses.
- "Canticle of the Turning". Very beautiful and very religious song. I went to Lutheran camp, what can I say?

[klia.livejournal.com]

Would you believe The Streets of Laredo and The Erie Canal?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

We sang both of those too! What was *UP* with the camp counselors?

Ooh, camp songs!!

[finabair.livejournal.com]

We always had a call-and-response one called Flea Fly, which had a parody called Flea Fly Mosquito.

Then there was The River Nile and the parody Spookhouse on the Nile. (Hand jive essential.)

And Life of a Voyager and the parody Life of a Girl Scout.

Lest you think the ONLY thing I recall are the parodies, there was also:

I've Got Sixpence
Bingo
The Desperado
The Donut Song
A Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe
The Bear Song
Boom Boom (ain't it great to be crazy)
The Princess Pat

...and I don't know any parodies to them.

Re: Ooh, camp songs!!

[southpaw526.livejournal.com]

How did 'A Boy and A Girl in a Little Canoe' go? That's ringing a bell for me, but I can't place it.

[nafs]

This is neat, but also really hard. I remember bits of choruses more than actual *titles* The list definitely conjures up memories, but I'd be interested to note how many different versions we all learned over the years and different regions. For instance, the Canadian version of This Land.. goes "from Bonavista to Vancouver Island", and the version of They Say That in the Army I learned a) was one of the "back to Ontario" variants and b) featured Dolly Parton. We usually added a "the boys are mighty fine" but I can't for the life of me remember who the guy was.

Land of the Silver Birch
Alice the Camel
They Say That in the Army
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
Suitors

[iko.livejournal.com]

I remember sitting around a camp fire when I was younger and singing "Give Peace a Chance", but that's not REALLY a campfire-type song, is it?

It seems like Peter, Paul, and Mary songs are really appropriate. Ditto Joan Baez.

Blowin' In the Wind
The Riddle Song (I gave my love a cherry that had no stone)

[(Anonymous)]

Two others songs that don't seem to have made the list yet:

Jacob's Ladder
Bingo

Emily

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

let's see.

Natalina Catalina
The Skeeters and the Bedbugs
The Tarzan Song (aka Bananas, Coconuts, and Grapes)
Flea (and its cousin Mosquito, which is the only one I can remember the words to)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

omg

and that's why they call me TARZAN OF THE APES!

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I sang a bunch of these. Let's see, things not on the list:

Sardines
Mississippi Mud
Epo i ty ty ay-oh (or however it's spelled.)
One-and-twenty
Barges

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, and The Green Grass Grew All Around!

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

The Billboard Song ("Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes/Chew Wrigley's Spearmint beer/KEN-L Ration dog food keeps your wife's complexion clear...")

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I thought I was the only one who'd ever heard that song!

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

Hmmm....*thinks*

Three Short-necked Buzzards
Gah-goo (went the little green frog)
Tzena Tzena
Auntie Monica
My Paddle (bonus points if you have enough minions kids to do it in a round with "Land of the Silver Birch")
He Jumped From Forty Thousand Feet
Pink Pajamas
Prunes
Fire's Burning
White Coral Bells
The Second Story Window
Squirrel
Whooping Cough
If I Were Not Upon the Stage
Sharks (Na-na na-na na-na-na)
There Was A...
On My Honour
Black Socks

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

Purple Stew
Four White Horses (more of a clapping song, but an excellent one as it's a four-person routine)
My Ship Sailed From China
Rattling Bog/There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea/L'arbre est dans ses feuilles/other variations
Nobody Likes Me (The Worm Song)

[carbonel]

I went to YWCA camp, Girl Scout camp, and a couple of different Jewish camps, so I know a huge variety of camp songs. Some of my favorites:

I Know a Place
Magic Melody
Green, Green
Long Road to Freedom
The Road to Freedom (two different songs, two different camps)
Flicker
The Ash Grove

Then there are the songs that I learned at camp, but were actually performed by 60s folksingers:

I Think It's Gonna Rain Today
It Isn't Nice
Cloudy Sunday Afternoon
zillions of Peter, Paul and Mary songs

Plus "Tell Old Bill," which Camp Newaygo turned into a silly song instead of the dirge about murder that the actual version is.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

Someone already said "Canadian Wilderness", but I haven't seen:

Mother Nature's Child (virtual brownies to anyone who can send me the words to the second verse!) or
Dickie Bird


Also, thank you, I'm now singing "Zum Gali Gali" in my head. Argh.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Linger
The Pajama song (to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic: I wear my striped pajamas in the summer when it's hot/I wear my flannel nightie in the winter when it's not.)
The Princess Pat
500 miles