Never Let Your Braces Dangle

An Analysis of the Language Used by Harry Champion in Never Let Your Braces Dangle

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This page gives my comments on some of the language and intonation used on Harry Champion’s August 1910 recording of Never Let Your Braces Dangle, written by Fred J. Barnes and R. P. Weston.

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
I was one of eighteen boys, And we all wore corduroys. I was the roughest of the gang, ’Cos my braces used to hang. Dangling all around my feet, my mother used to bawl, Pointing to a textoleet she’d hung upon the wall, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Never thieve, don’t deceive, never row or wrangle. Stick to the right, keep away from the bad. Don’t get tight like your poor old dad. But the greatest motto of the lot, my lad, Never let your braces dangle.	Corduroys appear in a number of music hall songs and surely always refer to being working men’s trousers. ’Cos my braces used to hang. Letting your braces (suspenders in American) hang, rather than putting them on your shoulders; there’s an archetypal image of the man who has left his braces hanging, he looks down-market, though it sounds like this might have been something of a fashion statement by certain working-class young men at the end of the 19th century. A textoleet. This is a good one. I can find no reference anywhere to this slang word, it is as if the dictionary compilers have never listened to Harry Champion sing the song. A textoleet is a notice in capital letters. Something written in ‘text letter’ is something in capital letters. Even when I was at primary school in the 1950s you could still hear reference to text letters, meaning capital letters. The leet part is a Cockney version of letter, pronounced leeter, so a textoleet is a notice in capital letters. Simple when you know, harder to work out if you don’t know, as it’s ignored by the etymologists of the world, by some despicable omission. Tight meaning drunk was very widespread and it appears in a number of songs of the period. Possibly has died out now. The Oxford English Dictionary refers to tight meaning drunk appearing in a Dickens essay in 1853, so it will be a bit older than that. It may be nautical, as for me it goes with ‘Three sheets to the wind’, which is of nautical origin (strictly three sheets in the wind), there’s an interesting writeup on that phrase at The Phrase Finder.
Mrs Murphy’s got a mat, ??? the skin of some tomcat. On the floor it looks no doubt, Like a man been flattened out. I said to her, ‘Mary Ann, your carpet does look queer’, She said, ‘ That’s my first old man’ and whispered in my ear, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Poor old sport, he got caught, and dragged right through the mangle. Over the rollers he rolled ’til he come, Out like a yard of linoleum, You may wipe your feet on his rum, tum, tum, Never let your braces dangle.	I can’t quite make out what Harry Champion sings before skin of some tomcat. Sounds like Tanks. I must get what this says at some point. Harry Champion sings Like a man sounding a bit like, Like a main. The good old London dipthong. Up until the 1960s was very widespread. I think people’s language might have changed a bit after that. Your carpet does look queer. Until usurped by homosexual men in the 1960s, queer meant unwell or strange. In music hall songs the word queer appears frequently. Dragged right through the mangle. Most homes will have had, or had access to, a mangle, used for drying the washing by squeezing it between rollers. Over the rollers he rolled ’til he come. Excellent, the London present-tense past. This is still in use in 2009, see The Public’s Reaction to the T-Mobile Dance on YouTube, the young woman on the right of the threesome uses the present-tense past when she says: ‘It was just one person, weren’t it? And then, like, slowly more and more come.’ I hope this YouTube clip never gets taken down as not only is there the London present-tense past, but also the London subjunctive: . . . just one person, weren’t it . . . Out like a yard of linoleum. Ah, yes, a yard of linoleum. Linoleum, or lino, was bought by the yard, I remember that, so the width of a piece of linoleum was presumably standard. See for example Old Bailey Proceedings, March 1903 where four men are charged with ‘stealing twenty yards of linoleum . . .’.
On one foggy afternoon, Once we had to shoot the moon. On the barrow I had got, Betsy’s chairs and all the lot. But I stuck it with a will, though people in the road, Shouted as I bided til I dragged my little load, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Up that hill I stuck it ’til my legs got in a tangle. Get to the top, said a chappie, ‘here we are’, Undid me braces and murmured, ‘ta’. I’d been pulling up a tramway car, Never let your braces dangle.	Shooting the moon is leaving without having paid the rent. I don’t exactly get the ‘bided til I dragged my little load’, doesn’t quite make sense unless Harry Champion is using the verb to bide to mean something different from wait or stay, it could mean stay in the sense of sticking with it, possibly, sounds slightly familiar, and perhaps he isn’t saying ‘til’. Not sure. Ta is thank you. Old London and possibly elsewhere too. The tramway car is the old London trams. Highgate Hill had a cable tram from 1884 to 1909, i.e. it was drawn up the hill from Archway by cable. After that the technology was advanced enough to get an electric tram up there so the route could be extended along Holloway Road (for nerds, this was route 9 until 1914, and then route 11 which became trolleybus 611 and then in 1961 bus route 271, which pretty-much still follows the old tram route 11. There were other steepish hills with trams on too, notably Herne Hill in south London.
One day fishing in the brook, With a worm upon me hook. I turned round as in a dream, Braces dangled in the stream. Some old shark came sailing by so quietly underneath, Nipped my braces, winked his eye, and whispered through his teeth, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. That old shark out for a lark, said I’ll teach you to angle. He gave a tug, I was into his jaw, into his tum and I said, Oh Lor! As he pushed me out of his little back door, Never let your braces dangle.	I don’t like this verse. Most music hall songs have stupid words, but this verse I think is juvenile stupid, it’s also a bit lavatorial, which is rather unusual for the music hall. The language in the verse is less interesting than often, too. I’ll teach you to angle is perhaps the only noteworthy phrase. I’ll teach you to . . . is a classic London admonition, meaning something like: ‘Do not!’ Do anglers angle? Possibly turning the gerund, angling, into a verb is either slang or a conscious joke. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used like that anywhere else.

So there we are, that’s some of the reasons why I love this song so much, it’s the wealth of language. She also my analysis of:

Boiled Beef and Carrots.

Don’t Do It Again Matilda.