The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92279 Message #1762384
Posted By: Joe Offer
17-Jun-06 - 04:24 PM
Thread Name: Origins: I've Got Sixpence, Jolly, Jolly Sixpence
Subject: ADD Version: O Dear Twelve Pence/My Man Thomas
In Popular Music of the Olden Time (1856), William Chappel gives these lyrics:
O Dear Twelve Pence
O dear twelvepence, I've got twelvepence,
I love twelvepence as I love my life;
I'll grind a penny on't, and I'll end another on't,
And I'll carry tenpence home to my wife.
...the last verse ending, "I'll carry nothing home to my wife."
Chappell says the tune he learned was from "My Man Thomas," a song in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas:
My Man Thomas
My man Thomas Did me promise
He would visit me this night;
"I am here, love; Tell me, dear love,
How may I obtain thy sight."
That's not the tune I know, either - so where'd the current common tune come from? The DT Tune is close to the one I learned as a kid, but not exactly it. Is the tune the Box-Cox contribution to this song? I certainly wouldn't pay them royalties for the lyrics, since Greig-Duncan proves most of it goes back at least to 1909.
-Joe-