THE WEE WEE MAN by Randall Stephen Hall

I grew up in North Belfast, close to a fairy fort, though I didn’t realise it at the time. Beyond The Troubles, the violence and the social upheaval. This significant memory, a sighting, of a wee fairy man, still caught in the memory, like a gentle spider’s web. As processed by a six year old. The man now, fifty years on, reflecting on this event.

This was to later inspire a poem set to music, called “THE WEE WEE MAN”. https://soundcloud.com/hugh-midden-speaks/track-title  I Hope you find the words, the rhythms and the voices (a man in a room, The Moon Shed, and a mic) uplifting. With no politics attached, just a gentler all embracing culture and the soft humour of my granny Ferguson, still watching over me even now. (Love you granny . . .)

The sound I applied to the track, in the main, came from my mother’s side of the family, the Robinsons and the Fergusons. Relations from North Antrim, passing on “their groove hey” to me, via my mother, my aunt’s and my grandparents, as I was growing up in Belfast, with the Troubles, like a dark unexpected wave, still waiting to crash upon my shore.

THE WEE WEE MAN

I am just the wee wee man

I drive down the road in my wee wee van.

I don’t go fast, I go right far

My coat and hands are dirty.

I don’t make much.

I just make enough.

The button’s come off

My wee coat cuff.

I look pretty strange

I smell pretty rough.

I might be seen as scruffy . . .

Jig, jig, jig I‘m not very big

I’m just knee high to a wee fat pig.

I oink at the moon

And I grunt at the sun

I’m the wee man just look at me run

I’m the wee man . . . just look at me run.

But I once was an elfin king.

I still live out by a fairy ring.

I hang my washin’ on a thorn bush twig

I dance as the moon does a wee jig.

I work round the farm

I work round the house.

I move like a leaf

I squeak like a mouse.

Sometimes bad and sometimes good

I wash in the rain and I sleep in the wood.

So if you see me out and about

Don’t be scared and don’t even shout.

Just take care, it’s in my plan

For you’ve just met the wee wee man.

CHORUS . . . end/Slán . . .

Written and recorded by Randall Stephen Hall ©

www.randallstephenhall.com