My dad used to sing lots of climbing folk songs (Manchester Rambler, All for the Want of a Nail etc), but there was one I am sure he used to sing about a man walking around the back of Cloggy who meets a the ghost of a climber ‘all dressed in white linen’.

I’ve searched and can only find snippets of references to it, no actual lyrics. Can anyone help?

Not too sure about that, but this is good…

The Ballad of Idwal Slab

https://monologues.co.uk/Sport/Idwal_Slabs.htm

Indeed – thank you sir! We should make this a general thread about climbing folk songs.

I know there’s no way of anyone being able to genuinely answer this (as it’s out decision) but would playing ‘The Manchester Rambler’ song at a funeral seem a little odd (let’s assume that the individual concerned loved the mountains and would regularly take his two boys out into them and indeed taught them this song in those times).

Nope.. wouldn’t be odd in the slightest.

Rule 70: “Always trust your gut.”

The climbers’ version of the Manchester Rambler, the Teenage Delinquent, was written down, if not composed by Tom Patey and is in his book One Man’s Mountains.

You can see Patey’s Ballad of Joe Brown here: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=128690

The line “all dressed in white linen” comes originally from a cowboy ballad called Streets of Laredo. I’ll check my copy of the Patey book this evening as I’ve a feeling it’s in there; it does contain a lot of Patey’s songs and poems.

I think it would be chuffing lovely.

It’s not the Tom Patey Joe Brown song.

It starts something like
As I was a climbing the steep cliffs of Cloggy,
As I was a-climbing on Cloggy one day……

As mentioned earlier to the tune of “Streets of Laredo”. In fact it’s basically the same song with the character changed from cowboy to climber.

Sadly I don’t have all the lyrics.

He Ain’t Gonna Climb No More (black humour from the 60s/70s Lakeland climbing pubs)

Are you ready cried his second as he took his comfy seat
Our hero feebly answered as he clambered to his feet
The rock was wet and slippery, the climb was long and steep
And he ain’t going to climb no more…

[chorus] Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die
With an ice axe up your arsehole and a crampon in your eye
Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die
And he ain’t going to climb no more.

He reached the final overhang before he fell I’m told
The rope was weak and rotten it was ten or twelve years old
It was frayed and it was tattered, it would never ever hold
And he ain’t going to climb no more…

Glory, glory… [chorus]

His face turned grey, his face turned green, he felt the sudden drop
He scraped his fingers to the bone as he vainly clutched at rock
I think he bounced just once or twice before the final shock!
And he ain’t going to climb no more.

Glory, glory… [chorus]

There was blood upon the hillside, there were brains upon the slope
Intestines were entwined amongst the pitons and the rope
He was squashed into his ebees like he was a telescope
And he ain’t going to climb no more…

Glory, glory… [chorus]

They scraped him from the corrie like a pound of strawberry jam
And telescoped his vertebrae into a billy can
They packed him in his rucksack and then sent him home to mum
And he ain’t going to climb no MORE!

‘I’ll check my copy of the Patey book this evening as I’ve a feeling it’s in there; it does contain a lot of Patey’s songs and poems’.

Not in my copy. The Joe Brown song is a little sketchy though. See page 272.