“I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” was a favourite marching song when I was a student of Christ Church College, Lucknow. The 1944 song is still popular as a victory song at football games in some places in the United States
Today (September 2) is World Coconut Day and there’s no doubt that different people around the world will mark the day in different ways, especially with different kinds of foods, coconut sweets and the ubiquitous coconut oil that is used extensively as an all in one solution for everything – as a massage oil for a smooth, glowing skin, for luxuriant hair and as a food, rather as a cooking medium.
With the health craze climbing to giddier height every day, you even have a special brand of cold-pressed Extra Virgin Coconut Oil. This oil has a fluffy consistency almost like snow.
So the health nuts say that eating two table-spoons every day, preferably early in the morning, can transform you into a new person – smooth and glistening, both from the inside and outside too, so that you become the embodiment of a well-lubricated person!
In the Philippines, with its over 7000 islands, coconut palm trees proliferate in abundance. Here too, coconut oil is used extensively in foods and beauty products.
But I associate coconuts with childhood memories from my schooldays. At Christ Church College in Lucknow, my alma mater from kindergarten to Class XII, we had a standard practice that is curiously associated with coconuts.
Each class had to line up in the corridors leading to the big hall, where the morning assembly would take place, solemnly conducted by the Principal, Mrs. Mona Sealy.
So once we were all standing in orderly rows, the music teacher, Miss Cardozo, would play a marching tune on the piano and we’d all march into the assembly hall. The tune had a very catchy and lilting melody and it was called “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts”.
The song was written by Fred Heatherton, a pseudonym for the collaborative efforts of three songwriters – Englishmen Harold Elton Box and Desmond Cox and American Irwin Dash
I would look forward to the morning assembly just to hear that lilting melody over and over again.
But then, after some time, I got a little curious to know more about this beautiful song, so I went home and asked Mum and Dad about it. I think I was in Class III then. Since I didn’t know the title of the song, I sang it in a ‘la-la-la-la’ sort of way.
They smiled and nodded. They not only knew the song title, but they knew the song themselves, so they sang it for me. It’s called:
I’ve Got A Lovely bunch of Coconuts
Down at an English fair, one evening I was there
When I heard a showman shouting underneath the flair
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts
There they are, all standing in a row
Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head
Give them a twist a flick of the wrist
That’s what the showman said
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts
Every ball you throw will make me rich
There stands my wife, the idol of me life
Singing roll a bowl a ball a penny a pitch
The song was written by Fred Heatherton, a pseudonym for the collaborative efforts of three songwriters – Englishmen Harold Elton Box and Desmond Cox and American Irwin Dash.
The song tells the story of a man at a funfair. He has a stall where coconuts are stacked in rows, one on top of the other. The stall was called the ‘Coconut Shy’ stall, a game of chance where one was supposed to knock down a coconut with a ball for one penny a chance. Those who were able to dislodge a coconut to the ground was given a cash prize. The song’s chorus is actually the stall-holder calling out to people to come and try their luck: “Roll-a-bowl-a-ball-a-penny-a-pitch!”
In 1950, the song was a top-ten hit in the United States for Freddy Martin And His Orchestra with vocalist Merv Griffin and sold over three million copies. The following year, it was a number-25 hit for Danny Kaye.
Danny Kaye, (born Jan 18 – died March 3, 1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian, musician, philanthropist, and chef.
Swedish performer Povel Ramel wrote a Swedish version of the song in 1950. It is sung by a little boy who, in the course of his attempts to open his resilient coconut, demolishes the family’s furniture, disfigures his mother, and finally blows their house up.
I wonder why that poor little boy couldn’t break his coconut. Here in India in many Hindu ceremonies, either in temples or elsewhere, they break the coconut in one smashing blow, with practised ease.
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