The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #5232   Message #123150
Posted By: lamarca
12-Oct-99 - 05:58 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Calico Printer's Clerk
Subject: Lyr Add: THE CALICO PRINTER'S CLERK
My husband and I sing this as a duet - we learned it from a Yorkshire/American couple named John and Rosie Goucher(?) and blended in some of the version sung by Mike Raven of The Halliard. It's been folk processed a bit by coming over to the USA, but here's the words we sing:

The Calico Printer's Clark


a broadside ballad from late 1800's

In Manchester, that city, of cotton, twist and twills
There's a girl who's young and pretty, she's the cause of all me ills
Years she has but twenty and her eyes are azure blue
Admirers she's got plenty and her name is Dorothy Drew.

Chorus:

It was at a dance I met her in 1863
And I never will forget her, though she was unkind to me
I was dressed in the pink of fashion, all me clothes and shoes were new
And we danced the Waltz Circassian with the lovely Dorothy Drew.

We Schottisched and we Polka'd to the tunes the band did play
We Waltzed and we Mazurka'd, til she waltzed my heart away
I whispered in this manner as around the room we flew
Doing the Varsovianna, "How I love you, Dorothy Drew."

verse missing here that we don't sing - will add when I get home

She wrote to me a letter that a call she meant to pay
Unto some dear relations, who lived some miles away
In a week she'd be returning, I must bid a short adieu
And her heart for me was burning, oh, deceitful Dorothy Drew!

It was early the next morning, to my breakfast I sat down
The smile my face adorning was soon turned into a frown
For in the morning paper, a paragraph I did view
That Jones, the calico printer's clark, had married Dorothy Drew.

In Manchester, that city, of cotton, twist and twills
There's a girl who's young and pretty, she's the cause of all me ills
Years she has but twenty and her eyes are azure blue
Admirers she's got plenty and her name was Dorothy Drew.
^^