Motley Words

The fish are waitin’ in the hold, The night’s have come to town
The folks with sense are in their beds, But the lumpers, they go down
Down pneumonia jetty where The wind cuts like a knife
I wish that I had never started On the lumping life
(Chorus)
And it’s all the night and half the day
Sweating for your lumper’s pay
Fill the boxes – Hump them down
Life is hard in Grimsby Town

We’re called the midnight billionaires By folks you’d never know
How your hand go stiff and cased in ice when the temperatures below
The wind cuts through your guts me lad? Your face is stiff and blue
And you wish the trawler owners were down there instead of you
(Chorus)

Me father was a lumper And a dockman all his life
Me mother told me sister Never be a lumper’s wife
You’ll wash his fishy overalls And darn his stiff old socks
And every night you’ll sleep alone While he goes down the docks
(Chorus)

If e’er I win the pools me lads’? My lumping days are through
I’ll cash me check from ‘littlewoods’? I know just what I’ll do
I’ll treat me mates and say good-bye And leave the lumping life
And then I’ll go to bed at nights And get to know the wife
(Chorus)

I’ll burn my dirty clogs and Throw my lumper’s card away
I’ll shove me leggins’ in the shed And leave them there to stay
I’ll tell the lousy ‘setter-on’? To stop his midnight call
And turn my back forever on That bloody cold north wall

And it’s all the night and half the day
Sweating for your lumper’s pay
Fill the boxes – hump them down
Life is hard in Grimsby Town   x 2

And it’s all the night and half – the – day