First of all thank you to all fellow catters for your help in resolving my query.

Since I started this thread I have been in contact with Professor Trevor Pentland proffessor of Geordieology at the University of Morpeth who tells me that Cushie Butterfield was in real life Elizabeth Butterfield and was indeed a big lass and a bonny lass who liked her 'beor'. She did sell 'yaller clay' used for brightening up of doorsteps,these were known as 'donkey-stones' here in SE Lancs. She was free with her favours and had 'flattened some grass in her time'
when George Ridley a famous Tyneside Music Hall artiste wrote the song and put it to the tune of 'Polly Perkins of Paddington Green'. Cushie's current paramour a six foot thirteen fisherman took umbrage at the song and made it known around Tyneside that he was going to slap five foot three daft. George went off the stage in Newcastle and went on the next Stage from Newcastle to London where he became the Andrew LLoyd Webber of his day,though not as ugly of course.

Finally a number of years ago a work colleague of mine who played the cornet in the English National Youth Brass Band heard me trying to scare the seagulls away by 'singing'
( most notes only heard by canines) the song and said that he did not know that there were words to the tune he knew as Cushie Butterfield and was a well known Brass Band standard.