Song of Medical Dick and Medical Davy

The first was Medical Dick
The second was Medical Davy
The first had a Bloody Big Prick
The second had Buckets of Gravy
To show-- to show-- to show what medicals are.

Then out spoke Medical Dick
To his comrade Medical Davy
'I'd swap my Bloody Big Prick
For you with your buckets of Gravy'
To show-- to show-- to show what medicals are.

'Steady Medical Dick'
Said Sturdy Medical Davy
'There's very little value in a prick
When you haven't got the passage of the gravy.'
To show-- to show-- to show what medicals are.

'Every bullock were a bull
But for the little matter of a ballocks
If your prick can keep the women full
You'll find they never grumble at its small looks.'
To show-- to show-- to show what medicals are.

The text comes from originally from 1903 according to some sources, but appears in the 1917 play, Blight: The Tragedy of Dublin. The subject matter, while presented humorously, is dark, dealing with several levels of message, from sexuality to the larger issues of sexuality in the underclass of that time in which disease was rampant while misunderstood and social conformity stood against ineffectual social and medical systems which were ostensibly "doing the right thing" stated in modern parlance.

Dr. Gogarty includes this seeming fluff in a larger story of poverty, in which one of the characters becomes syphilitic.

Gogarty, friend to Yeats and Joyce, becomes a model for a character in Joyce's Ulysses. ^{[ 1 ]} In the novel are mentioned the characters of Medical Dick and Medical Davy.

The strophes of the poem are set as if a verse and refrain form, though the verses and refrains are variations in of themselves as the setting progresses. Marked with the suggestion of the quarter at 92, the tempo is intended to be whatever the singer needs to enunciate clearly this rollicking text.

The last strophe breaks the cut time into half-time quarters, as the summation done in the guise of animal husbandry is colored in unresolved chords, before a reprise of the cut-time tempo primo and gestures from the continuing refrain. The term, ballocks, is a variant spelling of bollocks, or testicles, absent in the bullock but present in the bull.

The score is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.

NOTES

^{[ 1 ]} "Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming. Washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Come on, you winefizzling ginsizzling booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his backpocket. Just you try it on." from Ulysses (Ch. 14: Oxen of the Sun).