The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48931   Message #820380
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
06-Nov-02 - 08:25 PM
Thread Name: Tune Add: Missing DT tunes - Part NINE
Subject: RE: Tune Add: Missing DT tunes - Part NINE
TWABONN3   PRINCE CHARLES AND FLORA MACDONALD'S WELCOME TO SKY   This was posted by Bruce Olson, who also provided abcs for no less than three versions of the tune, so it's a bit of a puzzle that there's no tune with the DT file. The text and tunes are at Prince Charles and Flora Maacdonald's Welcome to Sky.. The first is the one to go for.

RESTODAY   THE REST OF THE DAY   Roud 1485. This is effectively a duplicate of  THE REST OF THE DAY'S YOUR OWN,  which has the tune. There are a few very trivial differences of wording, not sufficient to bother with. Really, this one ought to be deleted.

OXPLOW   OX-PLOUGH SONG   Described in the DT as "sung by Johnny Collins". His traditional source is not credited; it was, however, noted by Fred Hamer from Frank Rowe in Cornwall (no date, but roughly mid-20th century, and with no hyphenation. A few trivial changes have been made to the traditional lyric; the only one worth mentioning is in the chorus, which should have whoop along instead of walk along and move along. The former is the traditional phrase used; the latter are mis-hearings from Revival performer[s]. Midi made from Hamer's notation in Garners Gay (EFDS Publications, 1977). Hamer commented

"Several people in East Cornwall gave me this song, usually in fragmentary form, but this full version is from Frank Rowe who, though confined to a wheelchair, contrives to be one of the most cheerful and adventurous men in the parish - or rather two parishes, for the boundary cuts his cottage in two. This ancient song, from the days when oxen were used at the plough, can almost be said to belong to his family."

There is another set in the DT,  THE OXEN PLOUGHING,  this time copied from Roy Palmer's Everyman's Book of English Country Songs (not English Country Songbook, as stated): this originally appeared in Sabine Baring Gould's Songs of the West, having been noted from Adam Landry, Cornwall, in 1895. There is a verse missing:

For it's, O my little ploughboy
Come awaken in the morn,
When the cock upon the dunghill
Is a-blowing of his horn.
Soon the sun above Brown Willy,
With his golden face will show;
Therefore hasten to the linney
Yoke the oxen to the plough.

Palmer evidently intended to include that verse, as his notes explain what "Brown Willy" is (the highest hill in Cornwall); the verse seems to have been omitted by accident.