The Lumberjack Song is one of the most well-known and popular sketches by the Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe.

The sketch appeared in several forms (on the original television series, film, stage, and LP); each time the sketch started differently. The common theme was a man (originally Michael Palin, in later live versions Eric Idle) who expresses dissatisfaction with his current job, and then announces, "I didn't want to do this job. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!" He proceeds to wax rhapsodic about the life of a lumberjack, "Leaping from tree to tree," etc. He then rips off his shirt to reveal a red flannel shirt, walks over to a stage backed with a pine forest, and begins to sing about the wonders of being a lumberjack. He is unexpectedly backed up by a large set of male singers, all dressed as Canadian Mounties (several were regular Monty Python performers, while the rest were members of an actual singing troupe, the Fred Tomlinson Singers). As the song continues, the excited lumberjack increasingly reveals cross-dressing tendencies, which confuses the Mounties to the point where they walk off disgustedly.

In 2003, a version of the song was performed at the Concert for George tribute to George Harrison, with Palin in the lead role and Tom Hanks as one of the Mounties.

In Monty Python's Flying Circus (stage version), where the show is performed in French, the song is entitled 'Le Bûcheron (chanson)'.

A line from this song is sung in the musical Spamalot.

The song was translated into German for Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus, a special made for German and Austrian television. One significant change is that the phrase "Just like my dear Papa" has been changed to "Sowie mein Onkel Walter" ("Just like my Uncle Walter"), to rhyme with "Büstenhalter", German for "bra".

External link

• Monty Python songs on the Web