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.

[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]

OMG! I remember Joe!

[athena4lynn.livejournal.com]

Here --

Hello, my name is Joe
I have a wife and a dog and a family
I work (all day) in the button factory
One day, my boss came up to me and said,
“Hey Joe, are you busy?”
I said, “No, heck no!”
“Then do this...”
Actions: At the end of the first verse, pretend
you're punching a button with your right hand's index finger. Then repeat
the chant, adding your left index finger. Then one foot, then both feet,
then your head are added. Final action is to collapse as if exhausted.

[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.

[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

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Kucaburra!

[fantasmabob.livejournal.com]

it's cheese, it's cheese, it's cheese that makes the world go round it's cheese CHEESE cheese CHEESE cheese that makes the world go round it's cheese CHEESE cheese CHEESE cheese that makes the world go round, it's cheese that makes the world go round

oh throw me over the ocean through me over the sea through me over the ocean and the deep blue sea oh throw me over the ocean through me over the sea through me over the ocean and the deep blue sea

it's mice, it's mice, it's mice that make the cheese go round...

continue with cats, dogs, boys, girls.



Hello, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. I got a wife and kids and a family. One day my boss says to me he say Joe, are you busy? I say no. He says Joe, push the button with your right hand

repeat with various body parts until:

Joe, are you busy? I say YES

[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!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I am... strangely drawn to the cheese.

[fantasmabob.livejournal.com]

it is an excellent and addicting song. I would make an mp3 of the tune for you so you might know it's glory, but I am amazingly tone deaf.

[southpaw526.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, Kookaburra!

*now has it stuck in her head*

[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!

[southpaw526.livejournal.com]

Oh, also -

The Circle Game, and Drinking 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

[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*

[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]

but I am amazingly tone deaf

that would probably make it more accurate, considering!

(i have fond memories of that one as well. we'd actually end on love making the world go 'round....)