Seven Men: a Chant¹

Posted on February 23, 2004 by Jenna

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1 a simple combination of two songs you ought to know; but if you do not, by some strange chance, expect the incomprehensible.

Seven men on a dead man’s chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil be done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

The mate was fixed by the bos’n’s spike, The bos’n brained with a marlin spike,
Cookey’s throat was skewered through,
And the scullion’s head was turned askew,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Seven men took the bloody lure
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Dead and be damned three hour tour
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Gilligan’s axe his cheek had shore
And Gilligan he was stabbed times four and
There he lay and the soggy skies
Dripped all day in up-staring eyes at
Murk sunset and Howell surprise.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Seven men, stiff and stark the lot
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
And none can say which one Ginger got
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

With a cutlass swipe and a lead ball’s scar
And no planes, no lights, no motor cars, and a
Yawning hole in a battered head
Like Mr. Crusoe, only dead,
And the scupper glut with yawning red, and
There they lay aye damn my eyes
No luxuries, no Paradise
These folks were bound contrariwise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

The Skipper he was brave and sure
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Showed them his “three hour tour”
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

We wrapped ’em all in a mains’l tight with
Twice ten turns of a hausers bight
And we heaved ’em over and out of sight with a
Yo ho ho and a cheery smile
For these castaways and their murders vile
And a sullen plunge in a sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to Hell
And we docked at Gilligan’s Isle.