And so to 'The Banks of Sweet Primroses' an old favourite of mine. It was the very first broadside I ever acquired, in 1965, from a little stamp shop under Charing Cross in London. It was a Catnach, London printing and it cost me £1.10s which was a fair bit in those days. The most accessible sung version at the time was by the Copper Family and I promptly learnt their version and sang it in folk clubs.

The song was fairly widely printed throughout England in the 19th century, a mark of its popularity. None of the many printings I have predate the Catnach one and they are all the standard 6 verses as found in oral tradition. As far as I know Pitts didn't print it though some of his successors did, and it could well be that in that form it is no earlier than c1830.

The opening line 'As I walked out one midsummer morning' whilst used in many folk songs is even more notorious for its usage in broadsides that did not survive to be collected from oral tradition. Don't believe me? Type in 'As I w.......' in the search box on the Bodleian Ballads website.