The Reluctant Cannibal

Well after that we thought we ought to take you somewhere a little bit warmer To the tropics, for a song which we call the reluctant cannibal Seated one day at the tom-tom I heard a welcome shout from the kitchen Come and get it Roast leg of insurance salesman A chorus of yums ran round the table Except for Junior, who pushed away his shell Got up from his log, and said "I don't want any part of it" What, why not I don't eat people (hey?) I won't eat people (huh?) I don't eat people I must be going deaf Eating people is wrong It's wrong? Don't eat people Have you gone clean out of your mind? I won't eat people What's the matter with the lad? Don't eat people He keeps on repeating Eating people is bad But people have always eaten people What else is there to eat? If the Juju had meant us not to eat people He wouldn't have made us of meat Don't eat people Oh no, not again I won't eat people All the day long Don't eat people He keeps on repeating Eating people is wrong Well I, I never heard a more ridiculous idea in all my born days To think that a son of mine should grow up to be a sissy Me, chief assistant to the assistant chief I suppose you realise, son, if this was to get around We might never get self-Government I won't eat people Have you been talking to one of your mothers again? You're not getting to be one of these cranks Who think that eating people is cruel, are you? Seeing the man sitting in the pot and you think he's suffering Oh, it's not like that at all, why He's just had an invigourating chase through the forest He's sitting there in the nice warm water With all the carrots and dumplings and things He's thinking, oh, the pleasure and happiness I'm going to give to a heap of people That man in the pot there, he enjoys it Eating people is wrong Look son, son, I admire your sincerity Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not But you're young, you're young When you're young you think you can change the whole world overnight Even eating people, I know, I've been young myself Take it from your old dad, you've just got to learnt to take the world as it is I won't let another man pass my lips I know why you say don't eat people, because you are a coward, Francis That's your trouble, yes, a yellow livered coward You wouldn't mind eating people if you weren't afraid of ending up in the pot yourself How despicable, if you go on like this you're liable to get me into hot water I won't eat people (that's enough) I don't eat people (I don't want to) Eating people is wrong (communist) Going around saying, don't eat people That's the way to make people hate ya We always have eaten people, always will eat people You can't change human nature I won't eat people I don't eat people I won't eat people I don't eat people Must have been someone he ate Eating people is out I give up, I give up, you used to be a regular anthropophagi If this crazy idealistic idea of yours was to catch on, I just dunno where we would all be Just about ruin our entire internal economy Fortunately, I suppose it's, I suppose it's catching on isn't really very likely Why, you might just as well going around saying don't fight people, for example Don't fight people, don't fight people There, imagine, there, you see, all part of the same fantastical impossibility That's my boy Ridiculous