The DT file, harvested without editing from this old thread now lately revived, is rather garbled. I had better add a little relevant information.

The jig Martin mentions predates this song, and is where it gets its title. You'll notice that Felton Lonnen is not mentioned in the texts quoted above; it appeared, however (more or less), in Bruce and Stokoe's Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882, 148), where it was quoted from Cuthbert Sharpe's Bishoprick Garland:

The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
There's five black swine and never an odd one.

Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
That's five black swine and never an odd one.

There's another verse or set of verses, beginning "There's three famed horses frae Felton Lonnin' ", but I don't have a copy of that.

Only two verses of the song under discussion here appear in the Northumbrian Minstrelsy, where they are printed without the exaggerated dialect spellings that Derek Hobbs uses. The editors begin:

"Another short rhyme sung to the same air, which we have not yet seen in print, was popular as a nursery rhyme some fifty or so years ago [c.1830s].

The kye's come hame, but I see not my hinny,
The kye's come hame, but I see not my bairn;
I'd rather loss a' the kye than loss my hinny,
I'd rather loss a' the kye than loss my bairn.

Fair faced is my hinny, his blue eyes are bonny,
His hair in curl'd ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
O mount the old pony, seek after my hinny,
And bring to his mammy her only delight."


The additional two verses sung by the High Level Ranters (and, later, by Jez Lowe, who learned the song from them) seem to have been added at a later date; I think that Johnny Handle wrote them, but I don't guarantee that my recollection is correct. They are run together as the second stanza in the transcription earlier in this thread. The further verses quoted from the Hobbs book are, so far as I can remember (and I'm afraid I don't recall details) not traditional, but modern, made by one of those people who can't leave well alone and decided to bolt a happy ending onto the song. My own feeling is that those verses are rather trite and ill-advised, but obviously others will think them quite wonderful.

As to the pace at which the song is taken, you have to remember that it's a dance tune that became a nursery song. The tendency to sing it very slowly is probably a modern one.