Diane - but I think the Bob Arnold version was actually learned from hearing people sing it, wasn't it? (His parents used to keep a pub when he was a lad, IIRC.) I've also heard that he sang other songs, even if not on the Archers, and a rumour that John Heydon was trying to persuade him to sing at the National (though I haven't checked that with John).

The Village Pump was certainly one of the first songs I heard when I started going to the Herga folk club about 40 years ago.

The version I heard also started "There's a quaint little village down our way" (not "far away"), and I think in the last verse went "so we said 'there right you be', and we went and stuck his head beneath the pump".

Kitty