The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129135   Message #2896403
Posted By: MGM·Lion
28-Apr-10 - 11:19 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Widdicome Fair - Peter Who?
Subject: RE: Widdicome Fair - Peter Who?
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

is how the list appears in Baring Gould's Songs Of The West [1889-91], the original popular source, which is generally regarded as a definitive version, esp as it was thus repro'd in that much-used-in-schools Walford Davies songbook which will be recalled by anyone of my age. This is not of course to assert that it is a 'definitive' version, which would be an absurd claim, as all of us on this site will know, to make of any traditional song or artefact (Jon Raven, e.g., used to have a version whose chorus was not a list of names of those accompanying the narrator to the fair, but simply a nonsense refrain 'To me Oor, Bag-boor, Bag-nigger, Bag-waller, And a Bantibaloo', whatever that may signify). But it is the one which non-folkies will recognise as being the True One.

~Michael~