The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72519   Message #1249945
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
17-Aug-04 - 10:28 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Drover Boy
Subject: RE: 'The Drover Boy'
A new one on me. It might be a stage song, or possibly a translation of a German piece ("Switzer" does occur in English, but is presumably an imported term).

Drovers were a common sight in the UK a hundred years ago (though there weren't many mountains involved!) but that's all gone now.

(Although the male protagonist in The Ups and Downs / Haselbury Girl / Maid of Tottenham (etc; the last of the 17th century) occasionally comes from Dublin, he usually doesn't (in Pills to Purge Melancholy IV, 179-181, 1719 he came from Highgate). The DT has Stephen Sedley's dogs-breakfast collation at Maid of Tottenham).