Guest, don't apologize for your post, I thought it was wonderful. (Maybe I'm just getting old...!) I used to hear recordings of Vin Garbutt on WXPN, the folk music station in Philadelphia, back in the late 70s when I was a pediatric resident and just discovering folk music. Couldn't understand more than 25% of what he said, but I loved listening to him. His version of "Gentle Annie" was wonderful, and "The Hartleypool Monkey" was fantastic. I heard him in concert once in Philly, probably around 1979. Does anybody know the words to "The Bill Collector's Plums", or whatever the real title is? I just remember the last line: "For Christ sake, ding ding dong!" (The bill collector was hiding in the wardrobe, of course, to avoid being detected by the husband who had come home unexpectedly, of course, but his, er, plums had gotten trapped outside the wardrobe when the door closed, and the wife told her husband they were bells, and the husband, of course, tried to get them ringing. At least, I think that was the story.)

Aloha,
Mark