AR WELL IT CUD 'AVE BEEN WUS 

Enoch wus a-towing of his boat along the cut,
    When under a low bridge he found his mules ears daint fit.
He tried to chisel out the bricks for the donkeys ears to pass
    Up comes Eli  an ses to him: Yo ar a silly ass.
Why do yo dig two trenches & let the blighters feert goo through,
    The grournd is softer than the bricks, its easier on you,
But Enoch pozzles over this an answers with a frown,
    It tay his feet as wo goo throo, its is noggin years, yo clown.	chorus  

Enoch wus a-sleeping bad, just trying for to nap
    While next doors dogs were howling, gooing yap yap-yap yap.
All night long they bawled at him, then all the morning barked.
    Yo know he say to  Eli Jesus! I am bloody narked. 
But I con sort it out nowr, a plan I have devized.
    He had it coming, him next door, an he will be surprized,
Ive bought the dogs right off of him, and at him stuck out me tongue,
    They am nowr my dogs & instead will keep HIM awake night long.	chorus 

Enoch had a lawyer mon to sort his legal doing,
    Who earned his money well, in court when Enoch wus a-gooin
But one week a case he solved and early home he trotted
    And found his wife had guests alone in Ingle Nookie Cottage.
Solicitor then shot the mon, and wounded his wife sore
    Then shot himself, three times all told, to circumvent the law.
The wife had witnessed this an then with slowly fading health.
    Found-out in the will that his mistress had inherited the wealth.	chorus  

Enoch ses to Eli "Mon. What do yo mean owr kid?
    What ever could be wus than what our old solicitor did?
A fine upstanding gentlemon, his pretty little wife
    And then again a good milkmon, all removed from life."
Eli ses "Yo darft aperth, but con yo see the logic
    Listen I'll explain it nowr, yo'll see as if by mogic"
"Ar ses Enoch" with a sigh, "its plain as plain con be
    If it had been the night afore, the bullet would have got me.	( Or thee! )"

Chorus	Ar well it cud have been wus, it cud have bin wus than that.
	Ar well it cud have been wus,  yo know that is a fact.
	In Fibbersly and Willenhall, I'm told by old Eli
	They stick the pig upon the wall, to watch the band goo by.

	Ngya ngya ngya ngyar ngyar ngyar ngyar ngyar  ngyararuh  
	(chorus followed by band noises by all to suit, regulation smiles mandatory)



Enoch & Eli are, to Black country folk, the architypal simpletons. 
Long before political correctness was coined the Black country folk had chosen two of their own
 as the butt of their humour.  The practice of putting the pig on the wall to watch 
the band go by has many erudite explanations but Coleford townsfolk said it about 
Cinderford, two villages in Hampshire accused each other and in Yorkshire it was not unknown 
for villages in close proximity to consider rivalry also as the best policy in achieving 
self-worth.  
Witness Canadian Newfie jokes, France and Belgium,    Oz and Godzone 
and of course Irish v rest of world. 

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copyright Cresby Feb 1990