OLD RAGS & BONES

Old rags & bones please, old rags & bones. 
Just give me all yer old rags & bones. 
Old rags & bones please, old rags & bones, 
Just give me all yer old rags & bones.

I’ll swap them for a spinning paper wind mill toy 
That kiddies love to run with it gives them hours of joy.
Balloons I got in dozens to make me cart so gay
All for the chil dren so they can sport & play.

Now bones we burn to ashes to make yer china fine 
And linen goes for pa per to write yer friends a line. 
The steel it gets all melted in furnaces so hot
Then cast again in foundaries to make yer cookin pot.

Yes give me all the metal and junk yer need no more
And should I pass to mor row well leave it by the door.
And If it is a bucket put water in of course 
For thirsty work it is for Bess me old cart horse.

http://cresby.com     ©  Words & Music Cresby Brown  29th  April 1986.

For strict authenticity, the gap in the chorus should be filled by the noise of  a battered old 
brass band trumpet, just like Cresby remembers from his youth, played with maximum noise and 
penetration, and a total lack of tune or key !  At the time of writing the song, a rag & bone 
man was spotted in Oxford complete with the obligatory horse, cart and virtually indecipherable 
call of “AG BO”. Calls varied from “Old Rags & Bones” to a permutation of  just the vowels and 
an assortment of gargles, hence the use of trumpet or loud bell. In the fifties R & B men 
tended to arrive in a welter of noise plus all the kids of the neighbourhood in convoy. The 
carts were decked in balloons, paper windmills  and plastic bags each with a single fish. Paper 
by then had given way to sheets of plastic, and you had to find a lot of tat to get that 
windmill........  fish    were  all  but  unattainable.
Rags were sorted and linen sold on to papermills, other fibres were used in industry to swab 
down lathes and milling machines etc. In Victorian times bones were bought for a penny or so 
for 2lb and sold to the pottery industry where it was calcined, that is heated until all the 
combustible material was removed. The white residue is a form of calcium carbonate that lowered 
the melting point of porcelain clay, hence they called it bone china.     
By the fifties bones were not normally traded  by   R & B men.