The illustration is from a folk music mural design by Dahlov Ipcar for a Social Services Cafeteria in Washington, DC, submitted in 1940, used with permission of the Dahlov Ipcar Arts Collection, LLC..
List of Songs ~ Charlie Ipcar Home Page
Words by John Gilroy; music by E. Ray Goetz - New York: Vogel Music Co., © 1906
Mock ballad from The Blue Moon
From singing of Dennis Puleston, Long Island, NY
Printable Version ~ PDF ~ MP3 Version ~ Notes
The illustration is from a folk music mural design by Dahlov Ipcar for a Social Services Cafeteria in Washington, DC, submitted in 1940, used with permission of the Dahlov Ipcar Arts Collection, LLC..
A lady once she had a lovely daughter,
That lady was an actress on the stage
She'd walk into a cage of angry lions
Them lions they was always in a rage.
One day her daughter had a premonition
That everything that night would not go right
And so she told her mother in the kitchen,
"Don't go in that lions' cage to-night!"
Chorus:
"Oh, don't go in that lions' cage, dear mother, dear, tonight;
Them lions is ferocious and might bite!
When they get them angry fits, they'll tear you into little bits,
So don't go in that lions' cage to-night."
The lady laughed "Ha, ha!" She did not heed the warning
That unto her the daughter she did give;
"Oh, no!" she cried, "I do not fear them lions;
Not one of them could make me cease to live!"
She went into that cage of angry lions,
Them lions was ferocious as could be;
"Alas!" she cried as one strode up and bit her,
"I now recall what daughter said to me!" (CHO)
"Oh, who will save my mother?" cried the daughter;
"By lions she is being bit and et!"
"I will!" replied a young man in the gallery;
"I'll save your mother, you can bet!"
He strode into that cage of angry lions;
He quelled them and the mother res-cu-ed;
"Here's your mom," he said, as he kissed her (the daughter);
"For I have loved you ever since you said:" (CHO)
My mother used to sing this song to my brother and I as a lullaby and, of course, we always enjoyed singing along on the chorus. She learned it from our family friend Dennis Puleston, who had a wealth of old British Music Hall songs.
The header illustration came from a planned mural that my mother submitted for the cafeteria of a social services building in Washington, DC, in the early 1940s. The theme was American Folk Songs and Ballads. Sadly, she did not win that commission, but we found her study stored away a few years ago and have enjoyed it ever since. It became the basis for a running concert the I and my music friends organized called Dahlov Ipcar's Favorite Dolk Songs & Ballads.