This was transcribed from a recorded version by Old Blind Dogs original history making lineup which featured the talents of lead vocalist/guitarist Ian F. Benzie, bass/cittern/whistle/vox Buzzby McMillan, percussion/vox Davy Cattanach, and fiddler/vox Jonny Hardie on the Lochshore albums Live and Tall Tails

Ian F. Benzie contributed corrections to the lyric portion of this transcription years ago when he participated on a long since evaporated bulletin board that disappeared from the web in 2002.

This tune can be found in several versions including the Childs' Ballads collection and is in the public domain.

Pills of White Mercury
(sometimes seen as Streets of Larredo similar melody with toned down lyrics)

(Amaj) As I was a (Dmaj) walking by the (Amaj) banks o' the (Emaj) Ugie
(Amaj) Come my dear (Dmaj) friends and this (Amaj) story I'll (Emaj) relate
I (Amaj) spied a dear (Dmaj) comrade all (Amaj) dressed in white (Emaj) flannel
(A maj) Dressed in white (Dmaj) flannel and (Emaj) cruel was his (Emaj) fate.

The mercury was beating,
the limestone was reeking
His tongue all inflamed hung over his chin
A hole in his bosom, his teeth were a closin'
bad luck to the girlie fa` gi`ed him the glim (glim was a word for syphilis)

Chorus: And had she but told me, oh when she dishonored me
Had she but told me of it in time,
I might have been cured by those pills of white mercury
Now I am a young man cut down in my prime.

My parents they warned me and oftimes they chided
With those young flash girls do not sport and play
I never listened, no word ever heeded
I just carried on in my own wicked way

Chorus

It's down on the corner two flash girls were talking
One to the other did whisper and say
There goes that young man who once was so jolly
But now for his sins his own body must pay

Chorus

Oh doctor, dear doctor before your departure
Take all these bottles of mercury away
And send for the minister to say a prayer over me
So they can lay my poor body in the clay

Chorus

Now get you six fellows to carry my coffin
Six pretty fair maids to bear up my pall,
Give each of them there a bunch of red roses
So when they pass by me they'll not know the smell.

Chorus

 

Here's some interesting stuff I found while trying to find out more about the tune. Again, as the bulletin board disappeared I can't ask Ian if he knew anything about the age of the tune, and didn't think to ask back then...

"Man is not body. The heart, the spirit, is man. And this spirit is an entire star, out of which, he is built. If therefore a man is perfect in his heart, nothing in the whole light of Nature is hidden from him." -- Paracelsus

 

During the Renaissance era, a Swiss born physician, surgeon, chemist, metallurgist and alchemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheimn (1493-1541) -- better known as Paracelsus (a name he gave to himself -- which meant "superior to Celsus, who was a Greek physician I believe) but some medical historians also have nicknamed him the "Luther of Medicine" or "The Father of Pharmacology" During his lifetime, he stirred up quite a bit of controversy as he challenged the established medical practitioners with his belief that many illness were caused by external factors that attack the body rather than by imbalances of the four humors (yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm) and because of his beliefs abandoned the practice of bloodletting as a a means to a cure.

Paracelsus was first person to discover the element Zinc and was one of the first medical practitioners to utilize a most unconventional treatment of wounds by opting to keep them cleaned, properly drained and infection free. This was a radical approach as most doctors would just opt to let wounds fester and then would corterize them with boiling water then amputate after gangrene set in.

During his lifetime. Parcelsus traveled extensively throughout Europe and parts of the Middle East and along the way stopped to studied alchemy, medicine and even worked as a surgeon (in both war and peace time). During his medical practice he began to experiment with various unconventional treatments which utilized chemicals and minerals to treat diseases and afflictions. It is said he even once used a patient's own feces in a compound which he concocted as a treatment for the patient's bubonic plague. He soon discovered he was able to successfully treat goiter with a sulfur compound and also eventually treated and cured Syphilis with a mercury.

Alas, today the fruit of Parcelsus' labor has long since become immortalized during the chorus of this song which may have been written sometime in the 17-1800s as, according to Ian Benzie, Glim was a colloquialism for Syphilis.

I wonder if the person who wrote this tune actually knew who invented the pills which would become the subject of this tune?

Of course, nobody is really sure exactly when this particular tune was written, and as far as I know its author is also unknown, but based on history we can pretty much deduce that it predates the era of "The Wonder Drug" (20th century) as that discovery happened purely by accident on September 3, 1928 after Scottish physician Alexander Fleming returned from a short holiday. He must have been in haste to get away from his work obligations and it's said he haphazardly stacked petri dishes in the sink or on a shelf without emptying them.

Well as all vacations go,the two weeks flew swiftly by and his soon he found himself home and embarked on the menial task of tidying up his messy lab. Well, his procrastination wasn't such a bad thing, as when he picked up the petri dishes, he noticed there was a curious mold growing in some of the uncovered dishes ((which originally contained cultures of the Staphylococcus bacterium) and quickly noticed that where the mold grew, the bacteria didn't. This phenomenon no doubt caught his attention.

For about a year after this discovery he continued to study the mold which turned out to be a strain of the fungi Penicillin notatum. He documented his findings as he went along, and even experimented with its potential to treat infection by giving samples of the mold to animals to treat infections and even noted some success, however, for whatever reason he eventually shelved the findings and set to work on various different projects.

It wasn't until a decade or so into the future that Howard Florey and Ernest Chain of Oxford University would pick up where Fleming left off and the two soon isolated the substance in the mold that inhibited bacteria growth, however, this substance wasn't actually used to treat humans until after 1941 when a doctor named Charles Fletcher (also of Oxford) was treating a patient who was near death from a severe bacterial infection. After all known treatment had failed, in a last ditch effort to save the patient's life he gave him some of this substance and the first "clinical trial" of the drug was no doubt successful. Shortly thereafter Florey made efforts to team up with drug companies in the US to find a way to mass produce this drug that we know today as Penicillin. As infection was a leading cause of death from wounds in battle, during World ware II it became affectionately known as "The Wonder Drug" and greatly benefited soldiers and field physicians during W.W.II -- of course over time it was also discovered that Penicillin was a much better (and of healthier) alternative to using the poisonous heavy metal mercury elixir in fighting off effects of the glim too.

Mercury is actually poisonous, and too much can cause tremors, lung problems and brain damage (and I'm sure brain damage in some instances also led to irreversible insanity)... Alas, it is said the expression "Mad as a Hatter" may have its root in the fact that mercury dust was also used in the production of felt hats in the early 20th century and sometimes symptoms of madness were seen in those who made these hats...