With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm

• 1. Introduction

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  "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm" is a darkly humorous song from 1934, first performed by Stanley Holloway. The title alone sketches a gruesome image, and it asks to be explained. Who is the woman carrying her own head, and what is she doing out and about? And how did a novelty number from the 1930s end up sung by folk groups, a pop band, a drunken housekeeper on a television sitcom and convicts in a murder mystery?

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• 2. A Ghost With a Grievance

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  The woman in the title is Anne Boleyn, and the song treats her as a restless ghost with a score to settle. Her haunting ground is the Tower of London. Her target is Henry VIII, the king who had her beheaded, and the ghost is out to make him pay for it.

  Three people created the number. R. P. Weston and Bert Lee wrote the lyrics, and Harris Weston composed the music. Holloway introduced it to audiences in 1934. The song did not stay in his hands for long.

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• 3. Covers Across Decades

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  In that same year, 1934, the British actor Cyril Smith recorded his own version. Roy Barbour did too, and his release was a 78 rpm disc on Rex Records, numbered 8342 A. On the flip side was a different comic piece, "The Lion and Albert."

  The American singer Rudy Vallee took it up in the late 1930s. His record paired it with "The Old Sow Song" on the reverse.

  The 1960s brought two more recordings. The Kingston Trio included the song on their 1960 album Sold Out. The Barron Knights recorded it in 1966.

  Caryl P. Weiss made a recording in 1981 that found a second life as seasonal fare. It has been a mainstay of Dr. Demento's Halloween show.

  Bobby Clancy cut the song twice and gave it a new name both times: "Anne Boleyn." The first was with The Clancy Brothers on their 1982 Live album. The second came on his 2000 solo album, Make Me a Cup. The song also kept turning up outside the record shop.

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• 4. On Screen and In Print

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  Television reached the song in the late 1950s. The serial Spin and Marty, part of the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, made use of it.

  Decades later, the sitcom Frasier gave it a comic moment in the episode "Whine Club." Daphne Moon sings it after drinking a Bloody Mary and getting drunk.

  In the Marple episode "They do it with Mirrors," the song surfaces among the convicts. They sing an excerpt together just before a theater play.

  The song has also slipped into fiction. The novel Murder, She Wrote: A Question of Murder refers to it. So does Judy Blume's children's novel Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, which carried the ghost of Anne Boleyn to young readers.

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