"The worms they crept in"

[Ed Keer]

The Pogues have this on one of their albums (I think
it's If I Should Fall From Grace With God):

The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
...
Your brains come tumbling down your snout

I'm missing some in the middle about teeth falling in
and eyes falling out or something.

Ed

--- "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
wrote:

> On Sep 16, 2004, at 3:44 PM, Patty Davies wrote:
>
> > Hello George - as soon as I read this line, I
> remembered this from my
> > elementary school years, in Ventura County (Santa
> Paula) in Southern
> > California.  This would have been around
> 1962-1963.  There were a
> > couple
> > verses and there was a real sing-song way we used
> to recite it:
> >
> >   The worms crept in, the worms crept out
> >    in your mouth and out your snout
> >
> > There were more verses than this and I used to
> know them all :)   It
> > definitely had to do with dead bodies.
>
> from the 1940s, in southeastern pennsylvania:
>
> The worms creep in, the worms creep out;
> They play pinochle in your snout.
>
> [there was a lot more, but i'm just pleased to have
> recovered the
> pinochle reference.]
>
> google turns up nothing on this version, but it does
> turn up a folksong
> ("Lady All Skin and Bones" or "The Lady of Skin and
> Bone"), said to be
> based on a medieval homiletic poem, with a verse:
>
> And she walked up, and she walked down,
> And spied a dead man upon the ground.
> And from his nose unto his chin,
> The worms crept out, and the worms crept in.
>
> i don't find anything in a quick search of some of
> the opies' books.
>
> arnold, note present tense in my (obviously more
> modern) version
>    [if someone *really* needs my version, i could
> get the whole thing
> from a childhood friend, who unfortunately isn't
> available by e-mail,
> though we could exchange mail the old-fashioned way]
>



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