The World Is Topsy Turvy

A comic ballad from 1864
Words and music by Septimus Winner

The sheet music:

The-World-Is-Topsy-Turvy – Sheet MusicDownload

Accompaniment by Benjamin R. Tubb:

The-World-Is-Topsy-Turvy – MIDIDownload

Lyrics

  1. The world is topsy turvy as ev’ry one knows;
    We’re starving our neighbors and feeding our foes,
    And Greely and Beecher, both of the same pack,
    Would have us say white, is the same thing as black.

Refrain
Forever and ever, you may argue in vain,
For the world’s topsy turvy
And the people insane
Forever and ever you may argue in vain,
For the world is topsy, topsy turvy
And the people insane.

  1. If you should wish to travel up North from below,
    Down East you would say that you meant for to go;
    Where chaps part their hair in the middle we see
    Like Fremont and others as silly as he.
  2. The daddies wear shawls and the mammies high boots,
    The ladies wear chokers as high as it suits;
    A hasty skedaddle is called a retreat;
    And paper’s called money by all whom you meet.
  3. We’ll lay up our Councils and Mayor on the shelves,
    The ashes left standing have blown off themselves;
    Yet if in some region of dirt we should stir,
    We’d die, sure as fate, of the spotted fever.
  4. The cars should run Sundays, some people do say,
    They can’t walk to church of a wet rainy day,
    But the sinners who make all our laws are half crazed,
    And can’t pass the bill ’till their wages are raised

Sung here by Vancha March: