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Aunt Lucy made the announcement early in the day,
She said she hate to tell us, Uncle Bill had passed away;
And we were so excited, our legs began to shake,
'Cause we knew we'd been invited to Skipper Billy's wake.
At two a.m, we crowded in to say our last goodbye,
To think there's moonshine in the room it made us jump for joy;
But someone made a blunder that was beyond our reach,
And just to help us out a bit they brought along some screech.
We took old Bill out of the box and placed him in a chair,
We started drinking 'shine and screech to kinda drown our fears;
But when we looked at Skipper Bill his face was old and drawn,
We thought we'd have to bury him before the break of dawn.
And what a lovely funeral we had upon that night,
Well a gentle breeze was blowing and the stars was shining bright;
We bowed our heads and said a prayer and raised our glasses high,
And drank a toast to Skipper Bill a-way up in the sky.
Next morning we was awoken by Aunt Lucy once again:
"We's called search and rescue, we can't find Uncle Jim!"
Then the funeral flashed before me, I had an awful dread,
Bill was still there in the chair, we'd buried Jim instead.
I called the boys together and a meeting then we had,
I told them of the slight mistake, but it wasn't all that bad;
We'd go out there and dig him up, no one would never know,
'Cause Uncle Jim would never die with moonshine in the hole.
We placed the box upon the ground and lifted off the lid,
Uncle Jim just lay there grinning, but at least he wasn't dead;
He looked at us and said a prayer and said there was no doubt,
It was a lovely party, until the lights went out!
So may this be a lesson to ye swinging folks around,
Be careful what you're drinking, oh, when you're out on the town;
And may this be a lesson, I hope that you will teach,
Never, when you're drinking, mix moonshine with your screech.
Never, when you're drinking, mix moonshine with your screech.
See more songs by Ellis Coles.
This variant arranged and recorded by the Brewis Brothers — A. Frank Willis and Peter Francis Quinlan (Singers For Fishermen, trk#11, 1992, Atlantica Music, recorded at Kinck Sound, Scarborough, ON).
