“The Greenwich Village Epic,” aka “Way Down South in Greenwich Village,” or “Down in Dear Old Greenwich Village” is often quoted in books on the Village.

It’s usually credited to a famous Village character of the ’20s, Bobby Edwards, “the Troubadour of Greenwich Village.” (I’ve been assembling material on him, by the way; I hope to post it here soon.) In fact, it was a collective creation, a genuine folk song of the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, it was written by George Baker, the manager of the essential hangout Polly’s, and extra verses were added by many others. The first version I’ve found is in The Song Book of Robert Edwards (1917); the second is in Frank Shay’s More Pious Friends and Drunken Companions (1920). Both of these credit Edwards and Baker. Clement Wood included his own verses in two memoirs of the Village, written for Haldeman-Julius’s “Little Blue Book” series: Bohemian Life in N.Y.’s Greenwich Village (#1106, 1926) and Greenwich Village in the Jazz Era (#1336, 1929). Wood, by the way, credits the song to Albert and Charles Boni, Louise (Casey) Murphy, and himself, and grouses that it’s “called a Bobby Edwards song.”

Wood also calls it the “national anthem” of the Village. Typically, it’s satirical; and the satire is directed at the Village itself.

Nobody seems to have collected all of these verses in one place, so here is a first attempt at a complete version of the Epic. There may be other verses out there, but these are the ones I’ve found so far. There’s also a free adaptation by Tuli Kupferberg; you can easily find it on YouTube, so I haven’t transcribed it here.

From the Edwards Song Book:

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
That’s the field for culture’s tillage;
There they have artistic ravings,
Tea and other awful cravings:
But there the inspiration stops,
And they start silly little shops,
You’ll find them anywhere ’round Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
There they wear no fancy frillage,
For the ladies of the square
All wear smocks and bob their hair.
There they do not think it shocking
To wear stencils for a stocking,
That saves the laundry bills in Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
Where the spinsters come for thrillage,
Where they speak of “soul relations,”
With the sordid Slavic nations,
‘Neath the guise of feminism,
Dodging social ostracism,
They get away with much in Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
Where they eat Italian swillage,
Where the fashion illustrators
Flirt with interior decorators,
There the cheap Bohemian fakirs
And the boys from Wanamaker’s
Gather “atmosphere,” in Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
Where the brains amount to nillage,
Where the girls are unconventional,
And the men are unintentional,
There the girls are self-supporting,
There the ladies do the courting,
The ladies buy the “eats,” in Washington Square. 

Shay’s version has a few minor changes: the first line of the second verse becomes “Down in dear old Greenwich Village”; “soul relations” becomes “sex relations” in the third verse; and the second line of the fourth verse becomes “Where they all consume distillage.” This last change, I presume, is to save “swillage” for the additional last verse, which turns the mockery on the tourists:

Way down South in Greenwich Village
Comes a bunch of Uptown Swillage,
Folks from Lenox Subway Stations
Come with lurid expectations.
There the Village informalities
Are construed as abnormalities
By the boobs that visit Sheridan Square.

And, from Wood (LBB #1106):

Way down South in Greenwich Village
Modern Art proclaims its illege-
Itimate descent from living —
Gain’s the sin beyond forgiving!
Artists grow as thick as thistles,
Wit as sharp as hedgehog bristles —
Tomorrow is today, in Washington Square!

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
In this Freud and Jung and Brill Age,
People come with will paralysis
For the balm of Psychoanalysis;
Here the modernest complexes,
And the intermediate sexes —
Fairyland’s not far from Washington Square.

And from LBB #1336:

Way down South in Greenwich Village
Main Street maidens come for thrillage,
From Duluth and Pensacola,
To live a la Flaubert and Zola;
After each new thrill still racing,
Rarely chaste, and always chasing,
Apartments keep no maids, in Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
Thinking is mere bourgeois frillage,
Since the Freudians dared to launch us
On that ocean called Subconscious.
Every erotomania
Known from Aukland to Ukrainia
Is a daily dozen, down in Washington Square.

Way down South in Greenwich Village,
Free verse is the mental swillage;
All discard the chains of rhyming
For intensive Bodenheiming.
Every bench-legged critical beagle
Swears by Pound and Eli Siegel:
Poetry’s Cummings, down in Washington Square! 

A different version, with a different rhyme and metrical scheme, was published in 1971 in The Complete Immortalia, edited by Harold H. Hart. You’d have to rework the tune to get these verses to fit.

Down in dear old Greenwich Village,
Where they sport all sorts of frillage,
Where the spinsters hie for thrillage,
Here’s all kinds of crazy.
Down around dear old Eighth Street,
Which the Buddhists turned to “Faith Street,”
Beats and kooks stroll on this wraith street,
Acting somewhat lazy.

Down in dear old Greenwich Village,
Which consumes so much distillage,
Where good manners are just nillage,
Seek not peace and quiet.
Freaks pour in from subway station,
Freaks from every clime and nation,
Come with lurid expectation
Of a jolly riot.

Here all movies are symbolic;
Here all infants have the colic;
Here the hippies strut and rolic
Beggin’ for a quarter.
Houses have such quaint old shutters;
Dog-shit lines the curbs and gutters;
Demonstrations front of Sutter’s
Might include your daughter.

Village! Hah! So unbucolic!
Gay boys cluster here to frolic
Midst the barflies melancholic
On a liquid diet.
Hop-heads crowd in by the dozens,
Speed and smack and all their cousins;
Breezes carry all the buzzin’s
Where a head can buy it.

If you seek the pornographic,
Are enthralled by ethnographic,
Just follow, please, the heavy traffic
Past the Women’s Prison.
Here the fashion illustrators,
And the high-priced decorators,
Have become just fornicators,
Each a-seekin’ his’n.

Scene of so much petty pillage!
Here’s to dear old Greenwich Village!
Mecca of the neighboring swillage
From Bensonhurst and Rego.
If you are a high-class fuck-up,
And you deem yourself unstuck-up,
The Village is the place to buck up
Your declining ego.

ADDENDUM: I’ve found a couple of more verses, in another Little Blue Book by Clement Wood, A Book of Broadway Wisecracks (#1191). Under the title “Broadway’s Latest Song,” he gives the verses already cited in his other LBBs, with some minor variants, and adds these:

Way down south in Greenwich Village,
Modern woman never will age;
Satisfying love’s sweet hunger
Keeps these sirens always younger;
No one there admits her marriage;
Plans for babies meet miscarriage;
The birthrate’s minus one, in Washington Square!

Way down south in Greenwich Village,
In these days of Dawes and Coolidge,
All believe that Liberty’s fathers
Took some liberties with Liberty’s mothers.
So we patriotic children
Polygamize in ways bewild’rin’;
Harem, never skare-’em Washington Square!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)