Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping

Subject: Lyr? While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Sylvie
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 11:42 PM

Hi. Does anyone know the lyrics to June Tabor's "While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping" (from the Airs and Graces album)? I've found one version through DT, but it doesn't seem to be the same one. I searched through threads and someone said it was in their "Copper Family" Songbook, but didn't post the lyrics. I don't know if it's "The Copper Family" songbook, or "The Copper Family Songbook". I'd be most grateful to anyone who can help; this is a great song.

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Search for "Gamekeeper" threads

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While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping in the Digital Tradition

Subject: Lyr Add: DOGS AND FERRETS (Bob Copper)
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 12:06 AM

DOGS AND FERRETS
As sung by Bob Copper on “Sweet Rose in June” (1977)

I keep my dogs and my ferrets too,
I have them in my keeping
To catch good hares all in the night
While the gamekeeper lies sleepin'.

My dogs and I went out one night
'Twas to view their habitation,
Up jumped poor puss and away ran she
Straightway to our plantation.

She had not gone so very far in
Before someone caught her runnin',
So boldlye then she called out, Aunt,
I said, Uncle's just a-comin'.

I then drew out my little pen-knife
All quickly for to paunch her.
She turned out to be one of the female kind
How glad I was I'd catched her.

Now I'll go down to some ale-house by
And drink this hare quite mellow.
I'll spend a crown and a jolly crown too
And say I'm a right good fellow.

This song is from the Coppersongs2 CD and also from The Copper Family Song Book—A Living Tradition.

Under the title "Hares in the Old Plantation" a song with similar words but a different tune is sung by The Watersons on Green Fields. Those words were collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams from Noah Fisher, according to A. L. Lloyd's notes from the sleeve and insert. Another, different song by that name is sung by Martin Carthy on Common Tongue. The words on the latter, collected from Shadrach Haden, are similar to those above.

from: http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/~gillard/copper/dogs.html

Subject: RE: Lyr? While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 12:10 AM

And Martin Carthy's version is here. It's different from the one in the DT also.

Subject: Lyr Add: HARES IN THE OLD PLANTATION (Carthy)
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 11:52 AM

Since I don't have anything else to do I'll post the words to Martin Carthy's version this morning:


HARES IN THE OLD PLANTATION
As sung by Martin Carthy on Waterson:Carthy's “Common Tongue.”

Oh I've got a dog got a good dog too
And I have it in my keeping
To catch those hares that run by night
While the game-keeper lies sleeping

Oh me and my dogs we went out one night
To view a habitation
Up jumped one and away she run
Right into my plantation

She kicked she squalled she hollered out
I thought that she was running
I said O puss oh do lie still
For your uncle he is a-coming

I picked her up and I cracked her neck
Oh quickly I did paunch her
She proved to be of the female kind
How glad was I that I caught her

And as I was a-going over Hartford field
Scarce half a field or further
Up jumped another one and away she run
And I made her shriek murder

I picked her up I smoothed her out
Into my pocket put her
I says to my dogs oh we must be going
Before we meet some looker

So I went down to my neighbour's house
And I asked him what he'd give me
He said he'd give me a crown a brace
If I would bring him fifty

So I went down to the public house
And there I got quite mellow
Laid a crown another one laid down
Don't you think that I am a good fellow

Oh I've got a dog got a good dog too
And I have it in my keeping
To catch those hares that run by night
While the gamekeeper lies sleeping

Transcription by Gary Gillard with assistance from Wolfgang Hell.
From: http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/~gillard/watersons/hares2.html

Subject: RE: Lyr? While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 10:48 AM

Thanks Sorcha. I'm mystified as to how you could have managed to spell my name wrong, since everything else was correctly transferred from my website.

Garry

Subject: RE: Lyr? While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 01:26 PM

Sorry Garry, I copied and pasted all but the credits.....I guess I either can't read or can't remember! Mea Culpa. Wonder where Sylvie went......?

Subject: RE: Lyr? While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Sylvie
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 07:45 PM

ah, Sorcha, eternally grateful am I to you...I'm gone to June Tabor now to learn this song. Thanks ever so much! (it rarely takes more than lyrics to please me ;)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Alan W - Guest
Date: 18 Aug 16 - 10:07 AM

I am trying to figure out the notes to the Steeleye Span version of the similar song Dogs and Ferrets.   Such a song is listed under Roud 363, but all the melodies I have seen (Gamekeepers lie Sleeping, Hares in the Plantation are different.   

I have worked out the notes for the chorus - which they sing in unison, but the verses have harmonies that are tricky to hear and get the pitch. Can anyone help ?

Here is a link to what I have so far, but I know the verse is wrong......

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86691880/Dogs%20and%20Ferrets%20ASW.pdf

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Aug 16 - 04:40 AM

I'm gone to June Tabor now to learn this song

JT got hers from the great Bob Roberts - to which she added the Macrame Beat which has been the curse of many the unacommpanied floor singer for decades. It's worth looking the original recording up - not on YouTube, but here's our very own Dick Miles (AKA GSS / Good Soldier Schweik) giving all due respect to the fons et origo of the thing:

While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Aug 16 - 04:42 AM

I now see this thread is there best part of two decades old itself. I hope Sylvie's singing it...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Aug 16 - 07:04 AM

This is the same version that Mike Waterson sings on the album ' Green Fields '

Excellent rendition Jack.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: Tradsinger
Date: 19 Aug 16 - 08:03 AM

Gloucestershire gypsy version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrql4SFkd6I

Tradsinger

Subject: Lyr Add: HARES IN THE OLD PLANTATION
From: RTim
Date: 19 Aug 16 - 12:07 PM

The version, tune and words, generally sung was published by Frank Purslow in his book - Marrowbones - Collected originally by Dr. George Gardiner.
Purslow used Gypsy James Ray's (of Petersfield) words and the tune collected from Charles Bull of Marchwood (actually - Longdown).
Bull called his version - Hare's in the Old Plantation. His actual words are listed below:

HARES IN THE OLD PLANTATION. - Chas. Bull, Marchwood June 1907
These are the actual Bull words, not the Purslow amended version using Ray's words, etc., with Bull's tune.

I had a dog in my father's care,
Twas in his care and keeping,
To catch some game was my intent,
While keepers they lie sleeping.

My dog and I now scent could tell,
All around their habitation,
So up jumps one and away she runs,
Right into the plantation.

"Tan, tan" she holloed, "tan, tan" she cried,
"There's something stops me running,"
I says "be still you silly thing,
For your Uncle's just a-coming."

My dog and I now scent could tell,
Twas in a field on further,
Up jumps one and away she run,
My dog and she struck murder.

I picked her up and I cracked her crown,
And in my pocket I put her,
Thinks I to myself "I better be off,
Before the keeper's coming."

I went into a neighbour's house,
And asked what they would give me,
They said they'd give me a crown a brace,
If I could bring them fifty.

I went into a public house,
There I sat and got mellow,
I spent that crown and another one too,
Wasn't I a jolly fellow?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 18 Aug 17 - 10:05 PM

I suspect the subject of the "Oh Aunt" lyrics have cropped up somewhere in these threads. Though an interesting idea about hare-hunting being a folk-metaphor for sex has been offered on another thread, it didn't explain how that linked to the characters in these various versions. I think that "Uncle" is the undecipherable mishearing.
I'm sure it was Emily Slade [as was then]/Jones who said that the (or a) source (for her version) was recorded in Cobham, or Chobham (both close together, in Surrey). He was a strawberry picker. No idea of her source for this info.
But…  that area is near enough, back then, for an East Londoner to have reached it for casual employment in fruit-picking, so I'm guessing the singer was a Cockney(-ish). Charles Dickens indicates the Cockney origins of more than one character (Magwitch, in "Great Expectations", and Sam Weller) by giving them the speech-quirk of substituting a 'v' with a 'w'. To such a speaker, "Oh Aunt" is a rendering of "Ovaunt". Was it Gardiner's (and mates') transliteration of a word they couldn't decipher and the (posited illiterate) singer couldn't explain, into a phrase that at least exists in English, even if it made no sense? "Ovaunt", though, isn't a million miles from "Avant", a French word easily given a new-ish life when pronounced in English;  the more so when given a French pronunciation (a-VORN).
And why would an illiterate Cockney be spouting French? Well he mightn't have known it was French: back in the day, spoken English, even in cities, would have contained all sorts of what would now be called 'dialect' terms. We get huge numbers of hunting terms from the Normans:  hence some of us eat "beef" not "cow", "venison" not "deer", "pork" not "boar", "pheasant" (= French "faisan");  and the fox is known poetically as "Reynard" (the Anglo-Norman huntsman's term for the animal as quarry); why wooded areas set aside for hunting were/still are called Chases (e.g. Cranbourne, Dorset), from "la chasse" (=  the hunt).  Even that archetypally British toff term "Tally-ho!" can't escape its French origins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally-ho#Etymology).
  Thus "Avant", either in the sense of a 'battle-cry' exhortation "Forward!", or as a description "up ahead", is a perfectly feasible option, and likely to still have been in use in some (small-C) conservative fields of activity.
  Among the common folk, whose communities were probably less influenced by change than more progressive, early-adopter strata of society, it's likely that Norman terms were still widely heard in some contexts. One thinks of the truism that the country is slower to change than the city;   huntng is primarly a rural pursuit, and is proud of its tradition (whatever many on these pages may think of it), so I suspect that "Avant" is an ancient throwback that both singer and collector were unaware of.
In that light, I'm sure the "uncle" has been 'parachuted' in, to make sense of the "aunt" reference:  I reckon IT is the spurious one (though I can't make any sense of it).
Tradsinger's gypsy version contains the word (mondegrine IMHO) "airgun" (lyrics are posted on another "Gamekeeper" thread).  I'd be equally suspicious of that anachronism, too.  A quick skim-read does not suggest the hunter has a gun:  isn't that the point of having the dog?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: JHW
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 04:42 PM

I'm sure Jim Eldon does a version of this 'he didn't know I'd brindled she - while gamekeepers...' but I can't find it on line.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Ned of the hill
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 07:14 AM

it sounds like the version which    was sung by   Bob Roberts

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Mark Bluemel
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 08:51 AM

In Jack Blandiver's contibution (19 Aug 2016) he refers to June Tabor adding the "Macrame Beat" - not a term that I'm familiar with. Can anyone explain it or provide a good reference?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 05:50 PM

MB

On th thread "Do purists really exist?" ...

From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray - PM
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:49 AM

macrame is making things out of string.

"For sure, on one level, it is making things out of string, or rather (and more properly) jute. On another, however, Macrame has come to typify a certain 70's Folksy-Crafty Zeitgeist not altogether unassociated with the rhythmic contrivances of Steeleye Span and June Tabor (et al). I hardly think it's in any way disrectful or unreasonable to call this Macrame Beat. Tabor's While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping is a Macrame Beat classic, as is Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat, both of which force hitherto natural Traditional Songs into all sorts of unnatural contortions in a way that only becomes evident on seeking The Source of such material to see the extent of such perversions.

Another example is Carthy's Rufford Park, the Macrame Beat of which is so insistent I had to stop singing it because every time I did it came out all jerky."


thread.cfm?threadid=138735&messages=527&page=11#3189330

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
From: GUEST,Mark Bluemel
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 09:49 AM

"Macrame has come to typify..." - according to whom? Where? I can only find the term used in two thread on Mudcat, and my google-fu is usually pretty good.

So far the term just seems to be one or two people's coinage for something they don't like.