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I'm a young married man and I'm tired of life,
Ten years I've been married to a pale sickly wife;
She's nothing to do, only sit there and cry,
Praying and praying to God she would die.
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Doctor John,
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong;
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil,
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil.
Well, a friend of my own came to see me one day,
And he told me my wife she was pining away;
He afterwards told me that she would get strong,
If I'd get a bottle from dear Doctor John.
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Doctor John,
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong;
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil,
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil.
I bought her a bottle just for to try,
And the way that she drank it, you'd think she might die;
I bought her another, it vanished the same,
And then she got cod liver oil on the brain.
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Doctor John,
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong;
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil,
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil.
I bought her another, she drank it no doubt,
And then she began to get terrible stout;
And when she got stout, well of course she got strong,
And I became jealous of dear Doctor John.
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Doctor John,
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong;
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil,
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil.
Our house it resembles a great doctor's shop,
It's covered in bottles from bottom to top;
Well early the morning the kettle do boil,
You would swear it was singing of cod liver oil.
Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Doctor John,
Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong;
I'm afraid of my life, I'll go down in the soil,
If me wife don't stop drinking your cod liver oil.
A variant was collected by Ken Peacock and published as Cod Liver Oil in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 1, pp.48-49, by The National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved.
