Sunday, 20 January 2013

A life in letters: Glory, Glory Hallelujah



The Burning of the School is a parody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung, it is said, by schoolchildren on both sides of the Atlantic.

Wikipedia provides a typical version of the lyric:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers - we have broken all the rules
We ramrocked the offices and hung the principal
March on, third grade, march on!

Glory, glory, hallelujah
My teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind her door with a loaded .44
And the teacher don't teach no more!

The chorus was known in Lanarkshire in the 1960s in the following Scotticised version:

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
My teacher hit me wi’ a ruler
So I skelped her ow’r the eye
With a piece ‘I epple pie
And I haveny been tae school since then

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