Help me trace this strange childhood song.

November 26, 2007 9:02 AM

In primary school (In the UK) we used to sing a song about Hannibal The Cannibal, King of the Cannibal Land - But I can't find any record of such a song any more.

I'm pretty certain that the song came from a printed song book, but I don't know the name of it. This will have been some time in the early to mid 80s.

The only lines I remember are the opening:
Hannibal was a Cannibal,
King of the Cannibal Lands (or Tribe)
He eats Toes On Toast...

Both my brother, and my best friend from back then remember the song equally as vaguely, but enough to convince me there was such a song even though it seems very odd for kids to be singing something along these lines. I've been trying for years to find a copy of the song book, or the full set of words, but have never had any luck.

posted by paulfreeman to media & arts (3 comments total)

This probably isn't it, but I'll post anyway.
posted by HotPatatta at 9:07 AM on November 26, 2007

Can't directly help, but if you, your brother, and your best friend all went to the same school, you might try someone else local to you who went to a different school because it was very common, at least in my day, for teachers to write their own songs to be sung. Each of the schools I attended in the 80s had various songs that were sung regularly but were original compositions. Googling for "toes on toast" tends to support this (if those were the actual lyrics).
posted by wackybrit at 10:04 AM on November 26, 2007

I'll bet it was a variation of this, which apparently dates back to 1858. A different version appears here. I found these both through a Google search for "king of the cannibal".
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:46 AM on November 26, 2007