Sarah the Whale
Yesterday, suddenly, a phrase popped into my head:
“You can’t leave food within her reach…”
Where it came from, I don’t know, but there it was. It seemed familiar… an old song maybe? I turned it over and around and around in my mind, and pretty soon another bit floated over and joined it:
“Nor nursemaids, nor airedales, nor chocolate ice-cream sodas.”
And then I knew what it was! A Burl Ives song about a whale named Sarah! I think it was on a record we checked out from the library when I was 7 or so (that’s 30 years ago, folks). Haven’t heard it since. I googled those bits of text and found the complete lyrics:
In San Francisco town there lived a whale.
She ate porkchops by the pail;
By the pillbox, by the suitcase, by the bathtub, by the schooner.
Her name was Sarah, and she’s a peach,
But you can’t leave food within her reach;
Nor nursemaids, nor airedales,
Nor chocolate ice cream sodas.
She eats a lot, but when she smiles
You can see her teeth for miles and miles;
And her adenoids, and her spare ribs,
And things too fierce to mention.
So, what can you do in a case like that?
What can you do but sit on your hat;
Or your toothbrush, or your grandmother,
Or anything else that’s helpless.
If you want to know the tune, I will sing it for you. But only if I get a request to do so.
Category: Blog 15 comments »
March 26th, 2007 at 6:02 am
That was always one of my favorites! I was singing it in the shower about a month ago! It was the first time I’d thought of it in YEARS.
March 26th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Oh, ps–I think there’s another verse:
She knows no games
But when she plays,
she rolls her eyes for days and days,
and she yodels, and she vibrates, and she breaks the ten commandments.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Yay! We sang a version of this song at Girl Scout camp when I was a kid!!!
March 30th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Mmmmm… I’ve looked on the net, but I can’t find this tune anywhere. The lyrics sound cute…. were you really serious about doing a fast recording? — Mike ;)
March 30th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Yup! Give me a few minutes :)
November 20th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
THANK YOU! These are the REAL lyrics! I have searched and found “fake” lyrics!
November 21st, 2007 at 8:34 am
Heheh you’re welcome, Jenny :) I posted a link to the tune up there, in case you want it.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I remember Burl Ives singing “Sarah the Whale”. Now we sing it to our grandchildren.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:17 am
My father sang this song to my sister and me when we were little along with lots of others that are hard to find. Our Sarah lived in “Portland Town”. We lived in New York. Go figure. I’m on a mission to find all those songs my father sang. Currently the only MP3 of this I can find of Sarah is Sharon, Lois, and Bram. Ok, but ….. Does any one know of another recording? I don’t seem to find Burl Ives.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Heh heh… the phrase that popped into my head this evening was the bit about sitting on your hat, or your toothbrush, or your grandmother, or anything else that’s helpless. I couldn’t remember where it was from, but google pointed me here. Good ol’ google.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Yep, good ol’ google. The helpless grandmother bit always cracked us up!
October 20th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I, too, got here from a search engine – yahoo. Wouldja believe that I also heard this on a Burl Ives recording we borrowed from a library in Denver in 1967!!! Unless I am completely nuts (not a complete improbability) it goes to the tune of “Dixie” (just the verses of Dixie – not the chorus). It has been driving me crazy trying to find out about the album. It also had “Tommy Doolan’s Cat,” “Oriole”, and a song about a robin and a chicken comparing each other
A plump little robin flew down from a tree,
to hunt for a worm which he happened to see.
A frisky young chicken came scampering by
and gazed at the robin with wondering eye.
Said the chick “what a queer looking chicken is that!
It’s wings are so long and its body so flat.”
While robin remarked, loud enough to be heard
“Dear me, an exceedingly strange looking bird.”
I can’t remember the rest but it is, of course, about prejudice and ends up with both leaving thinking they were better than the other. If this jogs any memories for you or anyone else that might help me track this album down, it is greatly appreciated. Contact me at rickrodney@yahoo.com. Either way, thanks for posting this so at least I know I am not the ONLY person who ever borrowed this album from a library – lol!
October 20th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Hey Rick! There’s a little recording of me singing the Whale song near the bottom of the post. Yeah, the tune is similar to Dixie.
I remember the Oriole song!!!
Oh, oriole, oriole, oriole, oh
oriole oh,
oriole oh,
Oh, oriole, oriole, oriole, oh
Has anyone seen my baby-o?
I’ll email this too you, too, in case you don’t check back here again.
January 5th, 2013 at 2:21 pm
I learned it from my grandmother when I was a little girl. (I am 67 now.)
it was a slightly different version:
A plump little robin flew down from a tree
to hunt for a work that he happened to see.
A frisky young chicken came scampering by and
gazed at the robin with wondering eye.
Can you sing, asked the chicken; The robin said no.
and asked in return if the robin could crow?
So, the bird sought a tree and the chicken a wall
and each thought the other knew nothing at all!
March 26th, 2021 at 6:31 pm
Hey, I know this thread is pretty old… So I don’t know if anyone will actually get this message or care. But I wanted to let Rick know that the Burl Ives album was one of a couple that he recorded for Disney. And the only place that I’ve been able to find Oriole. (Last I checked his estate wasn’t able to re-release it because of Disney.) Anyway, it was titled: Walt Disney Presents Burl Ives’ Animal Folk. Great album all around but I am not sure it’s on anything but vinyl.