Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver

Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver (Chords)

I’m going to get so much comment spam on this post.

Since I tabbed out Scotland the Brave for Burns Night (I’ve updated that post with a longer tab), I thought I’d also do an actual Burns song. Cock Up Your Beaver is, apparently, a call to raise your hat. I’m a little skeptical as to whether there’s no pun intended. Particularly after reading the lyrics to songs like this one and those in the pdf on this page.

Whatever the truth, the song is popular with a modern audience. The version of the song in the player is the one played by Camera Obscura for a Burns Night Peel session in 2004.

The chords are dead simple – just A and D – leaving you plenty of brain space to concentrate on keeping a straight face. If you want to fancy it up a bit, you can play this to ape the guitar part:

Midi

After playing Whack-A-Haggis for far longer than any sane man should, I decided to work out the tune: The Sons of Eilean Donan by Gayle Ellett. Here’s a rough tab of the melody.

The Sons of Eilean Donan (Tab)

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7 Comments

zym January 24th, 2008 11:51 pm

hahaha- excellent:)

Im sure that version of ‘cock up your beaver’ is by actually by scottish band Camera Obscura – Ive been trying to find a mp3 of it all week.

Aparently they’ve done a number of Burns Covers.
p9000 January 25th, 2008 12:18 am

ye have never been one to shy away from double-entendre, have you Uke Hunt?
Nelson January 25th, 2008 5:03 am

SPAM!
Haha, sorry…had to do it.
But I may just learn this song and play it to every friend I know…
Woodshed January 25th, 2008 7:24 am

Andy: Crap, of course it is. Thanks for pointing it out.

p9000: I have no idea what you mean. I’m far too innocent to know ;)

Nelson: That’s a very good idea. At the moment spammers seem to be targeting posts with ‘Tom Cruise’ in the title, so this one’s been spam free (so far).
LonnaB January 26th, 2008 1:11 am

I would like to be able to think of something clever to say about cocking up my beaver, but I seem to be too busy fingering my G-string.

or is that g-string?

I’ll leave you guessing!
Brett June 27th, 2008 7:52 am

After using the word Beaver quite innocently on my blog i noticed a trickle of strange visitors, after that i had a beaver fill few days which has meant a continual stream of disappointed mack wearers visiting my blog. great fun!
Bas July 19th, 2008 9:02 pm

[puts on pedantry-hat] ;-)
This song has been around for centuries. Literally. In 1701, a book named ‘The Division Flute’ was published, which contained many different popular tunes and songs of the late 17th century. One of them was a song (with lyrics) called ‘Johny Cock Thy Beavor’ [sic.] Check out the website.
[takes off pendantry-hat, and makes tea]

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Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver