By The Cobblers

By The Cobblers

This song is related to the local custom of the 'giving of bloomers', which is first described in Sid's book Prewd and Prejudice. The gift was often accompanied by a charming local rhyme:

Valentine, valentine, I will be true;

Here is the proof, knickers to you.

By The Cobblers appears on Sid's album In Season

In North Walsham, by the cobblers, where the shops all stand in line,

Oh what rapture, her heart captured by a man quite in his prime.

Then on the 14th, February, came a parcel tied with twine;

Great sensation, combinations, his notation said "Be mine".

Oh me darling, oh me darling, oh me darling Valentine;

You have lost your coms forever, dreadful sorry, Valentine.

Red are Rose's, blue are Violet's, Pansy's pink and flannel lined;

Daisy's white, well, no, not quite, but they were once, in their prime.

All these bloomers, not just rumours, have been proffered at some time;

His were khaki, no malarkey, and they starkly spoke his mind.

So they planned to join their hands, in the sunny summertime,

But in March came wind and cold rain, and her lover did decline;

How he wept, and wished he'd kept those things that made him warm behind;

Without those he slowly froze, and from exposure he did die.

At the grieving it was freezing, for an icy wind entwined,

So she donned those cosy coms, without which he had declined.

But now the thaws on, summer draws on, and she's met a girl sublime;

Scanty briefs, and what's beneath, assuaged her grief, and now she's fine.