That seems to be a conflation of two separate stories about two different events. Both are probably apocryphal; but if 'The White Cockade' was really played it will have been the Scottish dance tune, not the later English song of the same name.

Things have evidently been going on here since I last looked in, but most of it needs no comment from me. Just a couple of trailing ends to pick up.

I had quite forgotten that I have a copy of Silverlode. Tom Bliss's comments there suggest that he got his 'Blue Cockade' from Show of Hands, and a quick trawl of YouTube shows that the two sets of words are essentially the same. Phil Beer isn't a frequent visitor here but if he does look back in, it would be interesting to know a little more about the words the band uses, particularly as he says they're from Dorset.

Roud lists only one Dorset example at the moment, and that's 'The Blue Cockade' in Frank Purslow's Wanton Seed, so it's among the things that Paul Sartin, Steve Gardham and I are looking into at the moment. As Frank printed it, it's quite a complicated collation from several sources (one Dorset and three Hampshire singers) very different from the Show of Hands set in some places and very close in others, so I'd be keen to hear more about they arrived at the song as they sing it now.

I don't know how a blue cockade found its way into a version of 'The Nutting Girl'. It's a strange old world.