Lyr Add: Mr Trill's Song (Hutchings-Pegg)

Subject: Lyr Add: MR TRILL'S SONG (Hutchings-Pegg)
From: Einsetumadur
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 11:23 AM

Another great collaboration between Ashley Hutchings and Bob Pegg, from the time when the Morris spark took fire for AH. I tried to get the lyrics written down. Some places still sound clumsy, so if someone might like to check them, you're welcome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfqPTCmgMY0

Here's an interesting link about Mr Trill and the Brimfield Morris Dance; seems it's a historical song...
http://www.opread.force9.co.uk/RoyDommet/BorderNotes/Brimfield.htm

How do you do, Sir? Trill is me name,
I've heard it tell it's all the way from London that you came.
We're four jolly fellows and we're nimble on our feet,
and it's each year in Christmas time for reverie we meet.

(Chorus:)
And it's two pairs to dance,
one pair to play:
and that's all we ever need
to drive our cares away.

It's well do I remember, that's when I was small
me father like a parson with his Jim Crow hat and all
It's true I learned me dancing over Chepstow way
it's him that learned me all the steps that I show you today

(Chorus)

Now Tom Payne moved in the year of '95,
we lost our finest fiddler to the Richards Castle side.
But now we've two musicianers, on them we all depend,
to play a slow Schottisch or a polka to the end.

(Chorus)

Well I can't tell you why we dress the strange way that we do,
I only know the old side did the one before the two
And when I'm getting older and I find I've lost me pace
well me son who knows the figures will step in to take me place.

(Chorus)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Mr Trill's Song (Hutchings-Pegg)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Jan 18 - 10:28 PM

I listened to this song sung by Ashley Hutchings on "The Countryside Collection" (2009) and there are a few words I hear differently:

Verse 1, line 4:
And it's each year at Christmas time for revelry we meet.

Verse 4, line 2:
I only know the old side did and the one before it too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Mr Trill's Song (Hutchings-Pegg)
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 19 - 06:29 PM

The sad thing about this song is that the lines are pretty-well verbatim from the Morris Black Book, and it was collected in 1909. Mr. Trill's hope that his son would step in to take his place didn't come true, for there's no record of dancing at Brimfield after 1914 - so we can all guess what happened. Musicians and Morris Men, Bell-ringers and Bakers, Colliers and Cobblers, all fell and the world changed for the worse.

But we should be grateful that Mr Trill met Cecil Sharp that Boxing Day 1909 in Brimfield, and managed to collect both the dance and his story.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Mr Trill's Song (Hutchings-Pegg)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Dec 19 - 10:04 AM

Well, I learned something today. I always thought it was a Bob Pegg/Mr Fox song!