The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150417   Message #3517287
Posted By: Steve Gardham
20-May-13 - 03:56 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Child Ballads: US Versions Part 5
Subject: RE: Origins: Child Ballads: US Versions Part 5
Here is an excerpt from 'The Oxford Drollery' being New Poems and Songs by W. Oxford, 1679. BL ref. 11621 a 19. (Inside the front cover is inscribed 'Heber, 1834'

'The first part composed by W. Hickes. Printed by B. G. and are to be sold by Dan. Major and Tho. Orrel at the Flying-horse, and Hand and Scepter against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, 1679. (I have no other records of B. G. or the other 2 mentioned)

p1 A Bull Droll, Tune-'I prethee sweetheart come tell me and do not lye now'.

I didn't have time to copy out the whole long piece and most of it was 10 times worse than what I give here:

Ile tell you a jest I never did know in my life
..........
My mother was cleanly too, I now must tell ye,
Both for the back and also for the belly.
She once did go to milk in dirty weather,
And dagl'd her coats so that they stuck together,
And there it hung from Candlemas until May,
Then she took a Hatchet and chopt it clean away.
And when she went ith' field to milk her Cow
She milkt in the paile wherein she serv'd her Sow.
She always set her foot upon a block,
And strain'd her Milk through the skirt of her Smock
And when she laid her Cheese upon the shelf,
She never would touch it till't could turn it self.
And when she went with her Butter toth' market cross
no other signe was but the print of her thumb.
She never us'd to make her Butter I'th Churm,
For she said neither would be good nor firme
Nor made it not as other women do,
But with her Bum she kneads it to and fro.
.................................
Second Part
.......................
And sent her husband for to fetch him a Cap
But before it came, he spued up all in lap.

It doesn't take much to see that some of this either gave rise to or was derived from Robin-A-Thrash. My money is on this as the original as it is part of a long description and therefore unlikely that the author would have bothered to pinch bits from an existing song. The whole is in a similar vein, much of it far more basic, such as excrement in food. More on intermediate versions shortly.