Ha, 'Deep Lancashire' is part of my only link to a (probably) unbroken oral tradition and the influence of commercial recording - that one - on it.

I come from those parts, and Cob Coalin' was something we kids did before bonfire night. The sleeve notes give an explanation. In my case it was late 1950's.

The tune we used wasn't the one Harry Boardman used, but the words were along the same lines. 'Our tune' is not very interesting but suited to the primary age kids we were; it's about the level of a playground skipping tune. Harry's is better.

I left home and in the mid nineties asked some of my fathers generation if it was still going on. They said "yes but they use the wrong tune, they use the one off that record. It's spoiled it."

Our words were always fragmented. In the early 2000's I wondered if the old folk remembered them better. I said that when we were kids our parents told us we were gettig the words wrong. The response was "that's what they told us when we were kids".