Lydia Pinkham - Drinking Songs

Drinking Songs

Drinking songs that consist of numerous verses describing the humorous and ribald invigorating effects of some food or medicine form almost a small genre in themselves. Lydia and her "medicinal compound" are memorialized in the folk song "The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham," also known as "Lily the Pink". A sanitized version of Lily the Pink was a number one hit for The Scaffold in the United Kingdom in 1968/69. This song was further successfully adapted into French in 1969 by Richard Anthony, describing humorously the devastating effects of a so-called "panacée" (universal medicine). It should not pass without mention that the reason a humble women's tonic was the subject of such and sundry ribald drinking ballads and an increasing success in the twenties and early thirties was its availability, as a 40-proof patent eye-opener, during Prohibition. As folk songs, they have no definitive versions.