Subject: Tune Req: Jonathan Brown
From:
Artful Codger
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 08:57 PM
Does anyone have a tune for the song "Jonathan Brown", about a barber who falls in love with a beauty who also falls for a tailor. But she can't decide between them and wants both. This option they reject, and while they retire to duke it out, she runs off and marries a cobbler. As punishment, only three months later she's blessed with twins (presumably, a barberlet and a tailorlet, though her new husband must have thought himself the father, to have married her preggers in such haste).
The text can be found in John Ashton's Modern Street Ballads (see, for instance, Google Books) and in several broadside editions. The earliest firm date I've found is 1844. As a hint to a probable tune, the refrain is given as "Dumble dum deary, &c." Given the number of later reprintings and at least one citation "to the tune of 'Jonathan Brown,'" it seems to have been somewhat popular, with an identifiable tune of its own.
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sj
