Using lyrics in a markup

[Marc Hohl]

Hello list,

is there a possibility to re-use lyrics in a markup?

I am working on a musical for children and I get the sheets for several
instruments, choir, partition etc. by a simple shell script which calls sed
and lilypond.

Now I wonder whether it is possible to create a kind of text book by
including the lyrics in a markup, perhaps with a scheme function which
replaces the " -- " by "".

Is it possible to store the text in a variable?

I tried

\version "2.13.46"

words = { This is my ex -- amp -- le text }

text = \lyricsmode { \words }

melody = \relative c' { c4 d e f | g a c2 }

\score {
  \new Staff {
     \new Voice { \melody }
     \addlyrics { \text }
  }
}

% for text only, there would be then something like
%
% \markup { word-wrap { \some-scheme-filter \words } }

but lilypond complains about the first line. Is it possible to achieve
what I want? I'd prefer a lilypondish solution over some script hacking ...

Thanks in advance

Marc