Subject: RE: Bertsongs?
From: Phil Edwards - PM
Date: 23 Apr 08 - 05:20 PM

The problem for me with 'Recruited Collier' is about the provenance. Here's Bert: "A set of this 18th century song was printed in Anderson's . The present version, from a collier, J. T. Huxtable of Workington, is in Come all ye bold miners".

Here's Steve Winick, from the "Reynardine" essay:
"Lloyd claimed that a man named J. T. Huxtable contacted him with a song he called "The Recruited Collier" (Lloyd 1952, 133). Lloyd's claim is highly suspect, however. Like Tom Cook, Huxtable could not be located by later researchers, although some looked for him in Workington where Lloyd claimed he lived. [4] In addition, it is now relatively clear that Lloyd actually created the song himself by adapting a poem entitled "Jenny's Complaint," written by Robert Anderson, a Cumberland antiquarian and poet. Anderson, who wrote the original in 1803, never claimed that the ballad had come from oral tradition. Indeed, he was quite clear in the preface to his book, Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect, that he was the author of the poems in the volume, explaining that they were copied from life and "composed during the author's solitary rambles on the banks of his favourite stream" (Anderson 1828, vi). Lloyd himself was aware of Anderson's book, noting that it contained "a version" of the song (Lloyd 1952, 133). He must, therefore, have known that it was not a "folksong" in any accepted sense, nor a product of miners' culture. This poem, unlike some others in Anderson's collection, does not appear to have entered the oral tradition until long after Lloyd's publication of it."
still a good song and very much worth singing.and that is my criteria.