Origins: Felton Lonnen / Pelton Lonnin

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 06:03 PM

needs cleanup. The Digital Tradition lyrics are taken from posts above. Here's the entry in the Traditional Ballad Index:

Felton Lonnin (Pelton Lonnin') (I, II, III)

DESCRIPTION: Pipe tune, with assorted incidental lyrics: "The kye's come hame but aw see not ma hinny, The key's come hame but aw see not ma bairn." Or "There's three fames horses frae Felton Lonnin.'" Or "The swine cam jumpin' down Pelton Lonnin'."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1900 (Stokoe/Reay), who attribute one set of words to 1793
KEYWORDS: music animal love separation beauty
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Stokoe/Reay, pp. 150-151, "Felton Lonnin'" (3 texts, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: [Cuthbert Sharp], _The Bishopric Garland, A Collection of Legends, Songs, Ballads, &c Belonging to the County of Durham_, 1834 (references are to the 1969 reprint), p. 41, "Pelton Lonin" (1 short text, perhaps the same as the above; 1 tune on p. 86)
Roud #3166
NOTES [95 words]: This piece presents a genuine puzzle to the collector: Three songs, or one? Stokoe's first version, a fragment, certainly looks traditional. The third probably is, too, it looks a bit like a singing game. The second looks more like a broadside.
None of the versions seems very well known. And they all use the same tune, described as a pipe tune. I finally decided to lump them. Roud does the same.
The first text was expanded by Johnny Handle into a full-grown missing-love song and recorded by Ray Fisher, but only the first two verses and the tune are traditional. - RBW
Last updated in version 3.1
File: StoR150

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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: GUEST,Dave Bridge
Date: 30 Apr 16 - 01:01 PM

The verses seen in some collections, where the bairn is found in the manger along with puppies and butterfly wings were written by Johnny Handle and Eddie Charles in the late 60's and early seventies

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 15 Jun 12 - 03:55 PM

For completeness, here's the set of words that Malcolm referred to in his post, but didn't have available. In Songs of Northern England, Stokoe gives three sets: Felton Lonnin (1793): The kye's come hame../Fair faced...; Felton Lonnin' (1820) - the version here; and Pelton Lonnin' (Durham version): The swine came jumping.../Three i' the dyke...

Mick

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FELTON LONNIN' (1820)

There's three famed horses frae Felton Lonnin',
For fleetness, beauty, and strength uncommon,
They've won the head prize wi' famous runnin',
But Dr.Syntax he's King o' the Lonnin'.

Three cups or in value was won by the Don,
Besides nine gold cups X Y Z won.
But mark! there's a score the Doctor's tyen from 'em
Which adds to my song - he's the King o' the Lonnin'.

Oh, could I in full perfection view him,
Or could my merits do justice to him,
By the spirit that roused the Muse o' Tim Whittle,
I challenge the world to produce such cattle.

May Riddell long live to adorn the county,
The poor all around acknowledge his bounty;
Northumberland's praise shall be ever forthcoming,
The wealthy donor of Felton Lonnin'.

Source: Stokoe Songs of Northern England, 1893.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: GUEST,ampocarbuile
Date: 15 Jun 12 - 10:37 AM

See th eDictionary of the Scots language at www.dsl.ac.uk, s.v. 'loan':
"Orig., before the enclosing of fields, a strip of grass of varying breadth running through the arable part of a farm and freq. linking it with the common grazing ground of the community, serving as a pasture, a driving road and a milking place for the cattle of the farm or village and as a common green". You will also find the compound 'loan-en(d)' there. They derive it from the same ancestor as standard English 'lane', though I wonder if some relative of the Gaelic 'lòn', a marsh, a meadow might be implicated too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: raymond greenoaken
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 06:40 AM

As the tune is such a distinctively "dangly" one, it's perhaps apt that the words have a dangly, unfinished quality to them. But I think there is another continuation, beyond J Handle's original additions, by the man Handle himself. I heard him sing it with the Ranters a couple of years back – fairly sure it wasn't the Eddy Charles continuation he sang.

In my old home town of Haltwhistle there's a Lanty's Lonnen. And there was once a bendy brambly track, now built over, that we just called The Lonnen.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 05:37 AM

Lonnen/Lonnan/Lonnon/Lonning are not just Geordie words. General north of England, for sure. Is the term used in Scotland too, can anyone vouch for that? I would gues so, but I can't think of an example.
All lonnens tend to be straight, I believe. Does anybody know any bendy ones?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 05:22 AM

Yes, that's the one. Mainly an Uilleann and ssp player, these days, I believe.

Paws

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Feb 11 - 03:45 PM

Thanks for that - I always thought the finding verses were JH's which kind of ruin the mood for me. Is that Eddie Charles the piper? I knew him at the Wylam Ship back in the early 80s.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 03 Feb 11 - 02:48 PM

S O'P - the verse starting:

"He's aalways out roamin the lang summers day through ....and
I've searched in the meadow and in the fower acre"

is the part written by Johnny. HLR's version on High Level in 1971 credits it. That hasn't been re-issued, as it appeared on a Leader label - and the current owner of that is fairly well-known. I don't want to go there.

Its the 3rd and subsequent "finding" verses that appeared later - Eddie Charles sounds likely.

The oldest title for the tune is "The Bride Has a Bonny Thing" - from c1700 Scots MS IIRC. Then "Joy gang doon the lonnin wi' her" - around 1750 both sides of the Border

Its existed ever since as both a jig, and a song tune, and a tune with variations - there are about 8 sets of these and the study of their development and interrelation is an interesting one.

The path / trackway at the bottom of my garden, which was the "main" road through the farm until 1920 (ish) is called Jack's Lonnen by the locals to this day.

Silver Lonnen and Two Ball Lonnen in Newcastle are unusually suburban (today) occurrences of the word.

Paws

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Feb 11 - 09:26 AM

That seems to be the version that the excellent Carolyn Robson sings on
Kathryn Tickells ' Northumberland Collection '

Dave H

Subject: Lyr Add: FELTON LONNEN
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Feb 11 - 05:16 AM

Hinny is a term of endearment, honey (possibly) though it carries a very different weight in ordinary usage - i.e. men will often call friends hinny by never honey!

We sing it thus (i.e without Johnny Handle's additions):

The kye come hyem but aa saw not me hinny
The kye come hyem but aa saw not me bairn
Aad rather lost aa the kye than lost me hinny
Aad rather lost aa the kye than lost me bairn

Fair faced is me hinny his blue eyes a shining
His hair in gold ringlets hangs sweet to me sight
So off ye gan daddy and look for your laddie
And bring tiv his mammy some peace tiv her mind

He's aalways out roamin the lang summers day through
He's aalways out roamin away from the farm
Through hedges and ditches and valleys and fellsides
I hope that me bairnie has come to nee harm

I've searched in the meadow and in the fower acre
Through stackyards and byres but nowt could aa find
So off ye gan daddy and look for your laddie
And bring tiv his mammy some peace tiv her mind

The kye come hyem but aa saw not me hinny
The kye come hyem but aa saw not me bairn
Aad rather lost aa the kye than lost me hinny
Aad rather lost aa the kye than lost me bairn

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: GUEST,pennyb
Date: 03 Feb 11 - 05:05 AM

I always assumed that "Hinny" is HENRY

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: GUEST,David Turner
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 05:04 AM

Felton is a real place in northumberland and Lonnen is just Geordie for Lane, so Felton Lonnen is Felton Lane

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Little Robyn
Date: 07 Feb 04 - 07:05 PM

As I understand it, Lonnen is Lane. Some versions have Felton and some (older ones) have Pelton.
Robyn

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Feb 04 - 03:13 PM

The DT file, harvested without editing from this old thread now lately revived, is rather garbled. I had better add a little relevant information.

The jig Martin mentions predates this song, and is where it gets its title. You'll notice that Felton Lonnen is not mentioned in the texts quoted above; it appeared, however (more or less), in Bruce and Stokoe's Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882, 148), where it was quoted from Cuthbert Sharpe's Bishoprick Garland:

The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
The swine came jumping down Pelton Lonnin',
There's five black swine and never an odd one.

Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
Three i' the dyke and two i' the lonnin',
That's five black swine and never an odd one.

There's another verse or set of verses, beginning "There's three famed horses frae Felton Lonnin' ", but I don't have a copy of that.

Only two verses of the song under discussion here appear in the Northumbrian Minstrelsy, where they are printed without the exaggerated dialect spellings that Derek Hobbs uses. The editors begin:

"Another short rhyme sung to the same air, which we have not yet seen in print, was popular as a nursery rhyme some fifty or so years ago [c.1830s].

The kye's come hame, but I see not my hinny,
The kye's come hame, but I see not my bairn;
I'd rather loss a' the kye than loss my hinny,
I'd rather loss a' the kye than loss my bairn.

Fair faced is my hinny, his blue eyes are bonny,
His hair in curl'd ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
O mount the old pony, seek after my hinny,
And bring to his mammy her only delight."


The additional two verses sung by the High Level Ranters (and, later, by Jez Lowe, who learned the song from them) seem to have been added at a later date; I think that Johnny Handle wrote them, but I don't guarantee that my recollection is correct. They are run together as the second stanza in the transcription earlier in this thread. The further verses quoted from the Hobbs book are, so far as I can remember (and I'm afraid I don't recall details) not traditional, but modern, made by one of those people who can't leave well alone and decided to bolt a happy ending onto the song. My own feeling is that those verses are rather trite and ill-advised, but obviously others will think them quite wonderful.

As to the pace at which the song is taken, you have to remember that it's a dance tune that became a nursery song. The tendency to sing it very slowly is probably a modern one.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From:
Date: 07 Feb 04 - 01:30 PM

There's a very fine version of the first two verses of this song on the old vinyl record High Level, (1971) by the High Level Ranters. They take it slower than Eliza Carthy on her recent Rice CD. As far as the words are concerned, having left us with the boy missing, they slightly surprisingly up the tempo to turn it into a jig. Good, though, and a very good LP. You've probably all got it re-issued on CD and know all of this

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: NSC
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 06:52 AM

Wolfgang

You mat wonder how I can answer your question from the North East of England because I live in Nenagh, in beautiful Ireland.

Well, I was born in Newcastle not far from Two Ball Lonnen and I am therefore very familiar with the Geordie language. Note I call it a language not a dialect.

Any help you need on anything Irish or Geordie I will try to oblige.

George

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Wolfgang
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 05:49 AM

George, thanks for the help. I am used to sometimes not understanding a word in the middle of a dialect song, but it is bothering not to understand a title.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: NSC
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 05:24 AM

Wolfgang.

A Lonnen is a long road similar to an avenue but without the trees.

It is found in street names in Northumberland such as : Two Ball Lonnen in Newcastle.

Felton is either a place name or a name used by locals to name a street, road or avenue

It is in common use in North East vernacular.

Tappy lappy doon the Lonnen. Etc., etc.

Hope this is helpful. George Henderson.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Aug 99 - 02:32 PM

Yes, it helps, thanks all.
But what is 'lonnen' (not in my dictionary)? Just a placename as I guess Felton is?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: bill\sables
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 11:57 AM

Hinnie is a term of endearment used in Northumberland and Co. Durham probably from Honey. Singing Hinnies are a type of scone or biscuit (US cookie) cooked on a griddle. I think. "stell" is dialect for stall or pen. Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: MMario
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 04:48 PM

Does this make it any more understandable?

The cow's come home, but I see not my honey;
the cow's come home, but I see not my bairn;
I'd rather lose all the cows than lose my bairn.
Fair faced is my honey, his blue eyes are bonny;
his hair in curled ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
O mount the old pony, seek after my honey;
and bring to his mammy her only delight.

He's always out roamin' the long summer's day through;
he's always out roamin' away from the farm;
through hedges and ditches and valleys and fellsides;
I hope that my honey will come to no harm.
Well, I've searched in the meadow and in the far acre;
through stockyard and byre, but naught could I find;
so off ye go, daddy, seek after your laddie;
bring back to his mammy some peace to her mind.

Well, I rode down the beck and along the old lonnen
as far as the sheep stell, and up to Crag height;
I searched all the way, but I still havent't found him;
but don't you fret, mother, I'm sure he's allright.
He could be in the woods after Robson's horse chestnuts or pickin' crab-apples on Laidler's Fell;
or maybe he's somewhere about in the buildings;
he'd not leave without saying, you know very well

Well, look you here, Mother, we found the wee rascal
and you'll never guess where the young devil got-
asleep in Ben's manger with Jess and her puppies;
as safe and as snug as he does in his cot.
He left all the flowers he'd picked on the wallend
and the other treasures I found there as well;
a dead butterfly and some pheasant's tail feathers;
some purple sloe berries and a blackbird's eggshell.

The cow's come home, and I found my bit laddie;
the cows comes home, and I found my bit bairn.
Thank goodness he's safe, my wee precious jewel;
tucked up in the stable and come to no harm.
Now sit ye down, Daddy, tuck in to your supper,
it's your favourite bait, hot taties and meat,
and a bit for the bairn, to grow like his Daddy;
now my family's safe and home for the night.

"bairn" is "child" "stell" I imagine is "pasture"
^^

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From:
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 04:26 PM

From J. Bruce and J. Stokoe's 'Northumbrian Minstrelsy', 1882 (reprinted last year in UK). Fragment (without music) in Cuthbert Sharp's 'The Bishoprick Garland', 1834.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Felton Lonnen
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 05:50 AM

the two signs before the names in parentheses were copyright signs when I posted them. This information should not get lost. W.

Subject: Lyr Add: FELTON LONNEN
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 05:46 AM

There are many songs already in the database from the 'Voices: Traditional English Songs" (1991)' CD. Here's one to join them. It is very close to what Jez Lowe sings on that CD, but the version I post comes from 'Singing Hinnies', Twenty favourite songs from the North East of England, arr. by Derek Hobbs. It is a challenging song to understand. I even do not understand the title. Any help? 'Hinny', for example, I guess is not what I find in my dictionary for it (a horse-ass hybrid), but perhaps a local dialect for 'honey'? By the way, for those who know the tune, is the tune identical to a tune called Felton Lonnin? (vv 2 & 5: * Johnny Handle, vv. 3 & 4: * Eddies Charles).

Wolfgang


FELTON LONNEN

The kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me hinny;
the kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me bairn;
Aa'd rather loss aall the kye than loss me bairn.
Fair faced is me hinny, his blue eyes are bonny,
his hair in curled ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
O mount the old pony, seek after me hinny,
and bring to his mammy her only delight.

He's always out roamin' the lang summer's day through,
he's always out roamin' away from the farm;
through hedges and ditches and valleys and fellsides,
Aa hope that me hinny will come to no harm.
Well, Aa've searched in the meadow and in the far acre,
through stockyard and byre, but nowt could Aa find;
so off ye go, daddy, seek after your laddie,
bring back to his mammy some peace to her mind.

Well, Aa rode doon the beck and alang the owld lonnen
as far as the sheep stell, and up to Crag height;
Aa searched all the way, but Aa still havent't found him,
but don't you fret, mother, Aa'm sure he's aalright.
He could be in the woods after Robson's horse chestnuts
or pickin' crab-apples on Laidler's Fell,
or mebbies he's somewhere aboot in the buildings;
he'd not leave without saying, you know very well

Well, look you here, Mother, we found the wee rascal
and you'll never guess where the young devil got-
asleep in Ben's manger with Jess and her puppies,
as safe and as snug as he does in his cot.
He left aall the flowers he'd pick on the wallend
and the other treasures Aa found there as well;
a dead butterfly and some pheasant's tail feathers,
some purple sloe berries and a blackbird's eggshell.

The kye's come hyem, and Aa found me bit laddie;
the kye comes hyem, and Aa found me bit bairn.
Thank goodness he's safe, me wee precious jewel,
tucked up in the stable and come to nee hairm.
Noo sit ye doon, Daddy, tuck in to your supper,
it's your favourite bait, hot taties and meat,
and a bit for the bairn, to grow like his Daddy;
now me family's safe and hyem for the neet.