The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #22617   Message #740868
Posted By: Martin Graebe
02-Jul-02 - 03:27 PM
Thread Name: Origin: High Germany
Subject: RE: High Germany, who wrote it?
Roy Palmer in 'The Rambling Soldire' goes for the Seven Years War. But that is for the 'other' broadside version starting 'Abroad as I was travelling, I was travelling all alone' which is aka 'The True Lovers or the Kings/Queen's Command'. Baring-Gould in 'A Garland of Country Song' also gives this, though his note starts, unpromisingly: 'This song, in hopelessly bad metre and of no poetic merit .... etc', though he does describe the tune as peculiarly fine. He collected it from Will Aggett of Chagford in October 1890.

He also mentions, more crucially to this thread, the 'real' High Germany ie 'O Polly love! O Polly, love! the rout it is begun' which he didn't collect but which he had a broadside for (Such #329) and which he also discovered in 'A Collection of Choice Garlands' publ c1780.

Martin