IF IT WASN'T FOR THE 'OUSES IN BETWEEN
Performed by
Gus Elen
Words and music by
Edgar Bateman and George Le Brunn

If you saw my litle backyard "Wot a pretty spot" you'd cry
It's a picture on a sunny day
Wiv the turnip tops and cabbages wot peoples does'nt buy
I makes it on a Sunday look all gay
The neighbours finks I grow em and you'd fancy youre in Kent
Or at Epsom if you gaze into the mews
Its a wonder as the landlord does'nt want to raise the rent
Because we've got such nobby distant views.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And Chingford to the eastward could be seen
Wiv a ladder and some glasses
You could see to "Ackney Marshes
If it was'nt for the ouses in between.

We're as countrified as can be wiv a clothes peg for a tree
The tub-stool makes a rustic little stile
Ev'ry time the bloomiin clock strikes there's a cuckoo sings to me
And I've painted up to Leather Lane a mile
Wiv tomatoes and wiv radishes wot adn't any sale
The backyard looks a puffick mass O' bloom
And I've made a little beehive wiv some beetles in a pail
And a pitchfork wiv a handle of a broom.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And Rye ouse from the cock-loft could be seen
Where the chickweed man undresses
To bathe 'mong the watercresses
If it was'nt for the ouses in between.

There's the bunny shares 'is egg box wiv the cross-eyed cock and hen
Though they 'as got the pip and him the morf
In a dog's 'ouse on the linepost there were pigeons nine or ten
Till someone took a brick and knocked it orf
The dustcart though it seldom comes is just like 'arvest home
And we mean to rig a dairy up 'some'ow
Put the donkey in the washouse wiv some imitation 'orns
For we're teaching 'im to mooh just like cah.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And ‘Endon to the westward could be seen
And by clinging to the chimbley
You could see across to Wembley
If it wasn’t for the ‘ouses in between.

Though the gas-works isn’t wilets
They improve the rural scene
For mountains they would very nicely pass
There’s the mushrooms in the dust hole
With the cowcumbers so green
It only wants a bit of ‘ot-’ouse glass
I wears this milkman’s night-shirt
And I sits outside all day
Like the plough-boy cove
What’s mizzled o’er the Lea
And when I go indoors at night
They dunno what I say
Cause my language gets as yokel as can be.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And soap-works from the ‘ouse-tops could be seen
If I got a rope and pulley
I’d enjoy the breeze more fully
If it wasn’t for the ‘ouses in between.