The author Adam McNaughtan is a teacher and singer from Glasgow. He wrote this stunning retelling of a familiar tale partly as a way of selling Shakespeare to inner city school children. His original is much more Scottish in its expression and Martin's version anglicises the song for a broader audience.
The first “act” of Oor Hamlet was written when I was reading the play with a fifth-year class at Cathkin High School. It then lay untouched for a year, until I saw a letter in “Sandy Bell's Broadsheet” which I felt overstated the case for singing more ballads in folk clubs. The writer, Sheila Douglas, had made a comparison between the plots of the ballads and the plot of “Hamlet”. This proved to be the stimulus I needed and I finished the “poem” very quickly. Even before I sent it off, however, I realised that with slight amendments and additions it could be sung to the tune of The Mason's Apron.
Jon Boden sang Oor Hamlet as the February 28, 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.
I've been killed and it's your duty to take revenge on Claudius.
He tries to make the king think that he's tuppence of the shillin'.
Tells Rosencrantz an' Guildenstern Denmark's a bleedin' gaol.
Arrived to do a special one-night gig in Elsinore.
Hamlet! Hamlet! Loves his mammy!
And that is why he's waiting.
So Horatio and him could watch to see if Claudius cracked.
And sure enough, the king walks out before the final bow.
The only problem being now that Claudius knows he knows.
Uncle Claude puts out a contract with the English king as hit-man.
When Laertes heard his dad had been stabbed through the arras.
With a blunted sword for Hamlet and a sharp sword for Laertes.
He fixed a poisoned sword-tip and a poisoned cup of wine.
'Cause he got stabbed himself and he confessed before he snuffed it.
And made up for hesitating once by killing Claudius twice.
He said, “ The rest is silence!”—that was, Hamlet had his chips.
Then Fortinbras, knee-deep in Danes, lived happy ever after.
Hamlet! Hamlet! All that gory!
Hamlet! Hamlet! I'm on my way!
Transcribed from the singing of Martin Carthy by Reinhard Zierke based on the text on Susanne Kalweit's Oor Hamlet lyrics page.