The Lumberjack Song
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The Lumberjack Song is one of the best-known and most popular sketches by the Monty Python comedy troupe. The song was written by Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Fred Tomlinson.
The sketch appeared in several forms (on the original television series, film, stage, and LP). It first appeared on the ninth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Each time the sketch started differently.
The common theme was of a man (originally Michael Palin, in later live versions Eric Idle) who expresses dissatisfaction with his current job (as a barber, weather reporter, pet shop owner, etc.) and then announces, "I didn't want to do this job. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!" He proceeds to sing about the life of a lumberjack ("Leaping from tree to tree,"), and lists various trees by their scientific names. He then rips off his overshirt to reveal a red flannel shirt, walks over to a stage backed with a coniferous forest, and begins to sing about the wonders of being a lumberjack. He is unexpectedly backed up by a large set of male singers, all dressed as Canadian Mounties (several were regular Python performers, while the rest were members of an actual singing troupe, the Fred Tomlinson Singers). In the original sketch from the program and in the film version, the girl is played by Connie Booth, John Cleese's then-wife; in the Live version, the girl is played by Carol Cleveland.
As the song continues, the lumberjack increasingly reveals cross-dressing tendencies ("I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers, I put on women's clothing, and hang around in bars"), which both distresses the girl and confuses the Mounties who continue to repeat and chorus his lines until they walk off in disgust. In the video/DVD version of And Now For Something Completely Different, at the end of the song the lumberjack is pelted with rotten fruit and eggs by the mounties, who can also be heard shouting insults.
The sketch took its inspiration from a discussion Palin had with an assistant cameraman, in which the subject was the cameraman's former jobs. One of the jobs was revealed to be that of a lumberjack.
[edit] Trivia
- In the original TV sketch, the song ends with "my dear Mama", but in all subsequent performances, including the film, it is "my dear Papa".
- Shortly before one onstage performance of the Lumberjack Song, George Harrison called Eric Idle and asked if he could sing background as a Mountie. He did it, the Python crew loved it, and nobody in the audience noticed him.
- "The Lumberjack Song" was shown at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.
- In 2002, a version of the song was performed at the Concert For George as a tribute to George Harrison, with Palin and Cleveland in their respective roles and Tom Hanks as one of the Mounties.
- In a stage version of Monty Python's Flying Circus, where the show is performed in French, the song is entitled Le Bûcheron (chanson).
- The song was translated into German for Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus, a special made for German and Austrian television. One significant change is that the phrase "Just like my dear Papa" has been changed to "So, wie mein Onkel Walter" ("Just like my Uncle Walter"), to rhyme with "Büstenhalter", German for "bra" (literally, "busts holder").
- A line from this song is sung in the musical Spamalot by the character Lancelot, and is one of several points leading up to a revelation at the end of the play.
- A reference to this sketch has been featured in the Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi anime series, during the "movie world" episode. In it, one of the characters complains about his job and quotes the opening lines of the sketch (in Japanese) but is left behind by the main characters before the actual Lumberjack Song begins.
- In the episode "Rinse and Spit" of the cartoon series Rocko's Modern Life, the character Filburt says that he never really wanted to be a dentist, and begins to sing a Lumberjack song parody about chimney sweeps, but is quickly cut off by Rocko.
- In the Eastvale Logging Camp in the online game World of Warcraft, there's a lumberjack by the name of Terry Palin, in reference to two of the writers of the song. Talking to lumberjacks will also sometimes result in them saying, "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay."
- In the opening of the original TV sketch only two of the trees mentioned, the fir and the larch, grow in British Columbia.
- In the PC game Serious Sam II, the hero picks up a chainsaw and sings the first line of the song.
- In Monty Python live at the Hollywood Bowl, the lumberjack is not dissatisfied with his job, but rather, "never wanted to be in such a shambolic sketch".
