Tooraloo (Boy With No Shoes, All Tattered and Torn, I Dreamt I Had Died)

DESCRIPTION: The singer goes out and sees various sights, e.g. a poor man eating grass, whom he tells that the grass is longer in back. He goes to heaven, where he is the first from his town, and Hell, where there are many from the place. The adventures are diverse
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1972 (Gardham-EastRidingSongster)
KEYWORDS: death hell travel humorous food drink marriage courting
FOUND IN: Britain(England(All)) Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Gardham-EastRidingSongster 14, pp. 18-19, "A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, pp. 169-170, "I'll sing you a song but it's all tommyrot" (1 text)
Palmer-SongsOfTheMidlands, p. 103, "Holly Ho" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1407
NOTES [105 words]: I'm not sure I've ever seen two versions of this with the same title. Steve Gardham describes it as a bar song to the tune of "Sweet Betsy/Villikens," with many verses made up on the spot to describe particular difficulties of the singer. Sounds about right. The texts vary so extremely that I suspect there are versions with no words in common at all; it could easily be split a dozen ways. Rather than try that, I'll follow Steve Roud's classification.
Fowke in the notes to Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood says this is based on "Six Miles from Bangor to Donaghadee," but this is clearly the better-known song now. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: Gard014

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