G'day again,

I'm back at my own computer and this is an extract from material I posted in the previous thread. I know I should do a lovely "Blue Clicky" ... but these things never work after midnight - my keyboard turns into a pumpkin!

The Australian collected texts (tune is well-known and in the standard collections):
^^
STARRY NIGHT FOR A RAMBLE
As collected by John Meredith from Tom Byrnes late of Springside/Springhill (near Orange), 1955.

It's a starry night for a ramble
Through the flowery dell,
Over bush and bramble,
Kiss, but never tell.
Of all the games that I love best,
It fills me with delight;
I like to take a ramble
Upon a starry night.


The broadside located by Ron Edwards, during his 1985 study trip to view broadside collections in the major British libraries, gives a full set of words and the well known 8 lines found in Australia are, respectively, the chorus and the second half of the first verse.

A Starry Night for a Ramble

From a broadside located by Ron Edwards in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 1985.

1. I like a game at croquet or bowling on the green,
I like a little boating to pull against the stream;
But of all the games that I love best to fill me with delight,
I like to take a ramble upon a starry night.

CHORUS: A starry night for a ramble,
In a flow'ry dell,
Thro' the bush and bramble,
Kiss, and never tell.

2. Talk about your bathing and strolling on the sands,
Or some unseen verandah where gentle zephyr fans,
Or rolling home in the morning, boys, and very nearly tight,
Could never beat a ramble upon a starry night.

3. I like to take my sweetheart, "of course you would," said he,
And softly whisper in her ear, "how dearly I love thee!"
And when you picture to yourselves the scenes of such delight,
You'll want to take a ramble upon a starry night.

4. Some will choose velocipede, and others take a drive,
And some will sit and mope at home, half dead and half alive,
And some will choose a steamboat, and others even fight,
But I'll enjoy my ramble upon a starry night.

The broadside is, of course, undated with no author named, but it is marked:
London: Printed at the "Catnach Press" by W. S. FORTEY, 2 & 3 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials. The Oldest and Cheapest House in the World for Ballads (4,000 sorts). Song Books, &c.

The term velocipede in the fourth stanza, appears (cited by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) about 1819 and, by 1849 was 'now obsolescent'. Croquet, in the first line is cited, in English usage, by the SOED from 1858 (although the game appeared in France in the 17th century).

There is another song printed on the same sheet: I'll Have Your Number, in which a policeman is called a Peeler. This term first meant an Irish constable (1817) but came to mean an English one after Sir Robert Peel's Police Act of 1828. The SOED first cites this use from 1851.

It may well be that such works of popular song would use idiomatic terms before they were seen by Oxford scholars in formal literature. The text reads like a recital of fashionable pursuits and, with the double entendre in the third stanza, suggests an early Music Hall song.

From the internal evidence, it would seem that the song dates from the mid to late 1850s. The few lines that survive in Australia, the chorus and the second half of the first stanza, are those that do not refer to the fashions and habits of London.

Regards,

Bob Bolton