We Three Kings (Parodies)

DESCRIPTION: "We three kings of Orient are, Smoking on a rubber cigar. It was loaded, it exploded...." The song may then count down to no kings. Or there are other parodies, e.g. "We three kings from Leicester Square, Selling ladies' underwear."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: derivative royalty humorous clothes technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 115, "We Three Kings (The Rubber Cigar)" (1 short text)
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, p. 297, "(We Three Kings of Orient Are)" (1 short text)
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, post 229, "(We Three Kings)" (2 texts, from user John5918, posted October 16, 2025)
DT, WE3KING2
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "We Three Kings (Kings of Orient)" (form)
NOTES [224 words]: "We Three Kings" has been parodied many times and in many ways. I won't try to separate them, since they are often sung together.
Almost certainly the most common -- the one in Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook and the Digital Tradition -- is the Rubber Cigar version in the description.
One of the two texts in the LibraryThing thread, from John5918, is
We three kings from Leicester Square
Selling ladies' underwear.
How fantastic, no elastic,
Buy your wife a pair.
Another LibraryThing user, TimSharrock, thought the last line of that should be "only a shilling a pair" or "seven and six a pair." Thus there has been a lot of folk processing there.
The version from Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ runs:
We three kings of Orient are
One on a tractor, two in a car,
One on a scooter, tooting his hooter,
Following yonder star.
Oh-oh, Star of wonder, star of light,
Star of bewdy, she'll be right.
Star of glory, that's the story,
Following yonder star.
The first four lines, including the bit about the scooter, must have circulated beyond New Zealand, because John5918's other text is surely derived from the same original, adapted to the Beatles:
We four Beatles from Liverpool far
Paul in a taxi, John in a car
George on a scooter beeping his hooter
Following Ringo Starr.
Again, we see strong evidence of folk processing. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: LTCS229

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