I posted all the above texts for this song some eight years ago, when for some complicated reasons I was trying to hide on the Mudcat.

Since then those likely lads at Mawkin:Causley have revived the original Napoleonic ballad, and they sang it in full for possibly the first time in about 200 years on their recent CD 'The Awkward Recruit'.

The Cantwell family version, 'The Yorkshire Blinder' which they sang rather cheerfully for Mike Yates at a wedding celebration around 1975, has been reissued on CD by Veteran on VTC7CD It Was On a Market Day - Two.

The song appears as #1735 in the Roud Index where some 21 records appear including some collected by Gwilym Davies under the title of 'The Gloucester Blinder', and a version collected by Alfred Willams 'When First I Came To Sherborne Town' from Frank Cook in Burford, Oxfordshire around the early 1920's.

I think that Charlie Bate, of Padstow, Cornwall also sang a version which he knew as the 'St. Mervyn Grinder' but I can't now trace any reference to that.

The Bodleian Broadside Broadside Catalogue has 6 copies of 'The Awkward Recruit':-

Firth c.14(113); unknown printer.

Harding B 25(92); printed by J Jennings (London).

Harding B 17(14a)and(14b)* and 2806 c.18(5); printed by Lane & Walker, Norwich.
*Harding B 17(14b) is printed by J Pitts, London.

Harding B 28(98) is by another unidentified printer.

Reinhard Zierke's site 'Mainly Norfolk' contains the lyrics recorded by Peter Bellamy in 1975.

This is Jon Boden's song for January 26 2011 in his A Folk Song A Day blog.

Matthew Edwards