The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68401 Message #1151490
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
31-Mar-04 - 09:38 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Cock (Killen)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Cock (Killen)
It looks like the set that the Hammond brothers got from Farmer Mills (Beaminster, Dorset, n.d.), with the first verse omitted and some relatively trivial alterations made; some with reference to the text that the Hammonds had from Robert Barrett (Piddletown, Dorset, 1905), others presumably of Lou's own invention. Perhaps he got the title from James Reeves, who printed both texts as The Grey Cock (though he considered the connection tenuous: see The Everlasting Circle, 1960, 136-138); Barrett's set appeared in Brocklebank & Kindersley, A Dorset Book of Folk Songs, 1948, 7, as O Once I Loved a Lass, and in Purslow, Marrow Bones, 1965, 52, as The Light of the Moon; in the latter case collated with Mills' text.
I'm not sure what note-values you intend in the rough notation, but I'm guessing that it's basically Mr Barrett's melody.