"The Derby Ram", also known as "The Darby Ram" or "As I was Going to Derby" is a traditional tall tale English folk song that tells the story of a ram of gargantuan proportions and the difficulties involved in butchering, tanning, and otherwise processing its carcass.
Llewellyn Jewitt wrote about the song in his The Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire of 1867, asserting that song had been alluded to for at least a century before that.
The song and the association of a ram with the town of Derby was used by a number of groups based there. In 1855, the First Regiment of Derbyshire Militia adopted a ram as their mascot and this ballad as their regimental song, a tradition that continued into the 95th Derbyshire Regiment and subsequently the Sherwood Foresters Regiment, Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment and Mercian Regiment, through regimental combinations. Similarly, the football team, Derby County F.C. (nicknamed "The Rams"), have adopted it as their anthem, also taking the ram as their club mascot.
It is included in the Roud Folk Song Index as #126. It was recorded by A.L. Lloyd, Mike Waterson, The New Christy Minstrels and others. A.L. Lloyd's liner notes for the LP English Drinking Songs:
This hoary old rogue of a song used to be sung in the English Midlands when village youths banded together and went from house to house at midwinter, with one of their gang dressed in a sheepskin to represent the Old Tup. The Tup, so the story went, had the power to confer or withhold good luck for the coming year. He was supposed to give beasts and humans encouragement to breed. If you gave the gang money, you were set for the year; if you refused you were in for a thin time.
The Midlands and South Yorkshire comprised the most intense area for the survival of the old mid winter ram-ritual, but other districts further north knew the custom as well. This custom is related to the processing of "wren boys" accompanying the song "The Cutty Wren".