Jolly Good Luck, Hooray!

January 2, 2009 11:05 PM

What's the name/origin of this poem/song? "There's a good time coming, be it ever so far away, that's what I says to myself, I says, jolly good luck hooray." I think it may originate in one of the World Wars. I've Googled, and all I can find are references to a song used by a UK football team.
posted by ScarletPumpernickel to media & arts (2 comments total)

The phrase "There's a good time coming" is an old Scottish one that seems to be used first in Rob Roy as "But there's a gude time coming"

Then there was a song in 1846, "There's a good time coming" by Mackay, which was then appropriated by early feminists.

This page on the Exeter Exiles (your football team?) says

A brief bit of background. There's A Good Time Coming (Be it ever so far away), [The name of the zine] was launched at the end of 1995,
....
The title, in case you're wondering, comes from a marching band tune that City used to run out to in the 1930s. Not only does it have this historical basis, it's also an appropriate description of the blind-eyed optimism required to support City through thick and - much more likely - thin.

This livejournal says ""There's a good time coming, be it ever so far away." - toast on the wall of Doyle's bar, in Dublin"

And some guy has your quote in his sig file, with "says I" instead of "I says"

I am making a guess at this point that it is a coloquial wee bit of phrasing that has evolved from the song.
posted by slightlybewildered at 1:16 AM on January 3

This also sounds like the chorus of a song called Wake Nicodemus, written by Henry Clay Work in 1864.

As he wrote it, it goes:

The "good time coming" is almost here,
It was long, long, long on the way.
Now run and tell Elijah to hurry up pomp,
And to meet us at the gum tree down in the swamp,
To wake Nicodemus today.

I don't know if he wrote those quotation marks into the song himself or not - but if he did, he could be quoting the 1846 song mentioned above, or possibly a hymn along the lines of There's A Great Day Coming.
posted by bubukaba at 11:34 AM on January 3