The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #84833 Message #1569174
Posted By: Paul Burke
23-Sep-05 - 10:27 AM
Thread Name: Dating songs (determining the age of a song)
Subject: RE: Dating songs (determining the age of a song)
I've traced Cawsand Bay to Arthur Quiller Couch's Oxford Book of Ballads, 1910, so it wasn't the fifties... but I wonder if HE wrote it? It has a bit of the Q 'folk song' style about it- "Bedad, that taught 'em the thrick!". It certainly tastes Victorian or later to me.
Or, back to language, are there any other songs at all like it that you would think of as 18th century?