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This tall story is actually one of several Australian variants of the English song "The Derby Ram', also known as "The Darby Ram", "The Albany Ram" and "The Ram of Dalby." Some versions, including the one I do, are fairly close to a sea chanty in form.Many versions of the song have also found their way to America. Folksong collectors, Albert L. Lloyd and Bill Scott believed that it has its roots in pagan fertility ritual. A series of mummers plays are traditionally performed around Derby every year, the highlight of which is the symbolic slaying of the ram, played by a performer covered with a sack through which protrudes a broomstick with a ram's head impaled upon it. The butcher stabs it in the throat and a boy catches the blood in his bowl, an event which is referred to in many versions of the song. The suggestion is that this grew out of some earlier pagan sacrifice ritual.
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