Boiled Beef and Carrots

An Analysis of the Language Used by Harry Champion in Boiled Beef and Carrots

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This page gives my comments on some of the language and intonation used on Harry Champion’s January 1910 recording of Boiled Beef and Carrots, a song by Charles Collins and either Fred Murray or Bert Lee.

I am especially interested in looking at the language of the old London music hall songs, as that is the language of my grandparents.

Lyric	Comment
When I was a nipper only six months old, Me mother and me father too, They didn’t know what to wean me on, They were in a dreadful stew. They thought of tripe, they thought of steak, And a little bit of old cod’s roe, I said, ‘Pop round to the old cookshop, And I’ll tell you what’ll make me grow:’ Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots, That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Blow out your kite, from morn til night, On boiled beef and carrots.	Nipper. I think this comes from the Italian-influenced lingua-franca: nipotino, literally meaning grandchild but coming to mean any small child. That seems likely to me to be the origin. It’s one of many London words of that provenance such as scarper (scappare) and billydoo (biglietto), I think. (Note that many people say that billydoo is an anglicising of the French, billet doux, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for that, and since a billet doux is a love letter and a billydoo a ticket or small piece of paper, exactly corresponding to the meaning of biglietto, I believe my guess to be a more credible-sounding one). Getting down to the old cook shop refers to something that no longer exist. Cook shops. A little bit of old cod’s roe. My grandparents would say, when offering you something to eat, ‘I got a bit of jam’. A bit of is of the period. Darby Kell is Darby Kelly, rhyming slang for belly. There’s an old Irish song that refers to a drummer in the Napoleonic wars called Darby Kelly: ‘My grandsire beat a drum so neat. His name was Darby Kelly-o’, see the Bodleian Library entry. But that sounds a bit obscure to be adopted as rhyming slang. I wonder if it was a racehorse, named after that Darby Kelly, that caused it to catch on. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was. Darby Kelly as slang for belly appears in at least one other song song by Harry Champion: Any Old Iron, where he sings: ‘I put it on, across me Darby Kell‘. maybe some others, I shall keep an ear cocked. Blow Out Yer Kite. My interpretation is that this means, ‘Fill Your Face’. See Kite You Are for the reasons why I am convinced of that.
When I got married to Matilda Brown, A funny little girl next door. We went to Brighton for the week, Then both toddled home once more. My mates all met me in the pub Said a feller to me ‘What’s your bread?’ Said, ‘What did you have for your honeymoon?’, So just for a lark I said: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. The wife of mine, looks fat and fine, On boiled beef and carrots.	‘Both toddled home once more’. In a number of songs of the period people are toddling. For example see Don’t Do It Again Matilda. A common expression right up until the 1950s or 1960s. What’s Your Bread?’ What will you have to drink. Just for a lark I said Many music hall songs have things being done for a lark, for example see the final verse of Never Let Your Braces Dangle. The expression of doing things for a lark persisted well into the 1940s and 1950s.
Now we’ve got a lodger, he’s an artful cove, ‘I’m very, very queer’, he said. We called for the doctor, he came round, And told him to jump in bed. The poor chap said, ‘I do feel queer’, then mother with a tear replied, Said, ‘What would you like for a pick-me-up?’, And he jumped out of bed and cried: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots,. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Blow out yer kite from morn til night, On boiled beef and carrots.	Quite a few music hall songs refer to lodgers, for taking in a lodger to help pay the rent was widespread. An artful cove is an expression that has now died out. My grandparents would use the word ‘artful’, to mean cleverly devious, they used it all the time. As children we would get called artful if we were doing something that they thought was a bit underhand as they saw it. Artful presumably means creative, and at that time creativity was generally seen to be a bad thing. Following convention was noble. A cove is a slang word for a man, according to the Oxford English Dictionary it was a low-class or thieves slang word for a man dating from way back to the 16th century. That it was still current in the late 19th century and right up into the 1930s or 40s was possibly more due to the adoption of the Romani word ‘cova’ or ‘covo’ which, according to Partidge, means ‘that man’. Quite a number of Romani words found their way into London slang, drum coming to mean a house for example, and more recently chav. Chap (used later on the the verse) is also a slang word for man. The dictionaries tell us that it was a chapman, a 16th century word for a customer, that in the early 18th century got shortened to chap as a word for a friend, and subsequently came to mean a man of any sort. I cannot remember my grandparents using the word ‘cove’, though they did use chap. Until publicly usurped by homosexual men in the 1960s, queer meant unwell or strange. In music hall songs the word queer appears frequently.
I’m proud to be the father of a lovely pair, Of nippers and they’re nice fat boys. They’re twins, you can’t tell which is which, Lake a pair of saveloys. We got them Christened in the week, the parson took them on his knee, I said as they’ve both got ginger hair, I want their names to be: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots,. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Gentiles and Yids bring up your Kids, On boiled beef and carrots.	Saveloys are bright red sausages. I believe that the red colour comes from the saltpetre that was put in them. Can you still get saveloys? I must try and get a photo. We got them Christened in the week is an odd way of putting ‘this week’ isn’t it? Was very common and could still be. Gentiles and Yids – never get away with that now, though I’m not sure it was intended to be offensive at all at the time, simply amusing, I think.

Some of the reasons why I love this song so much, it’s the wealth of language. She also my analyses of:

Never Let Your Braces Dangle

Don’t Do It Again Matilda