The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #42222   Message #616376
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
25-Dec-01 - 10:59 PM
Thread Name: Tune Add: Missing tunes: WANTED - part EIGHT
Subject: RE: Tune Add: Missing tunes: WANTED - part EIGHT
1207)   FOSTERS' MILL  The DT file names no source of any kind for this.  So far, the only set I can find is in Karl Dallas' One Hundred Songs of Toil (1974); this too provides little information beyond the comment "This song was first published in Ballads and Songs magazine".  It omits the final verse given in the DT, but contains an additional one:

The wind it blew, the sparks they flew,
Which alarmed the town full soon,
And out of bed poor people did creep
And run by the light of the moon.

This follows the first verse (described as "chorus" in the DT); the next verse is given as:

Around and around we all will stand
And sternly swear we will:
We'll break the shears and windows too
And set fire to the tazzling mill.

The first verse is repeated at the end.  Tazzling is glossed as tangling.  Midi made from notation in the book.

1387)   GRAZIER'S DAUGHTER  The DT text was transcribed from a record by June Tabor, and contains a number of small errors.  The transcriber has, irritatingly, insisted on omitting final vowels from many words (bein', sighin', etc.) which might be appropriate when noting from a traditional singer, but is to my mind pointless when transcribing from a commercial recording made by a professional entertainer who got the song out of a book (where the words were spelled normally).  Oh well (pet peeve, obviously).

The book in question was Frank Purslow's The Wanton Seed (EFDSS, 1968), and the song was noted by the Hammond brothers, as Betsy, The Servingmaid, from Robert Barrett of Puddletown, Dorset, in 1905.  Line 3 of verse 3, about which the transcriber was unsure, should be: By all the swearing powers above. The final line of verse 10 is quoted in the DT as I'd send poor Betsy across the main, which makes nonsense of the narrative; Mr. Barrett actually sang I'd send for Betsy far over the main.  Midi made from the notation in the book.