Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier

Subject: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:13 PM

I first cam across Peggy and the Soldier through Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick in the 60's.

It's got a great tune and sense of purpose. I got the words the other day and they seem to give Peggy a pretty bad time for going off with the Soldier.

Would you sing it?

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:21 PM

lessee - married woman with a child abandons the family and runs away with another man. He turns out to be a jerk and she returns home. Bitter husband dosn't believe her when she says she will remain faithful and rejects her.

Sounds pretty realistic.

If the genders were reversed it would probably be lauded.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:24 PM

Here's the link to it - Peggy and the Soldier

Depends how sung. I'd trust Martin Carthy to sing it, though maybe not everybody. The point is, there's no triumph in the man's reaction, it's how things are. He's angry and bitter - but note, he's not violent towards her.

If it was the other way round and it was a husband coming back home afyer running off, I don't think many people would be surprised or uneasy because she wouldn't have him back.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Mary Humphreys
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:28 PM

Hi Les,
I have sung it on occasions. It reminds me of the 'Demon Lover' Child ballad story. Except that Peggy doesn't get to die horribly. I agree with you about the tune - it is good.
Maybe I will brush off the cobwebs from it & sing it a bit more....
Mary

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:50 PM

The Johnstons also did sing it.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 03:36 PM

He kicked and he beat her and he called her a whore
Saying get back to you John..........

John, her husband, he mounted on his high horse back,
He rode until he came to the water.
He abus-ed the wind and the waters, clear,
Sent Peggy off to sea with the soldier.

He abus-ed the man that builded the boat.
He abus-ed the captain that sailed her.
He abus-ed the wind and the waters, clear,
Sent Peggy off to sea with the soldier.

MMMMMM thoughtful advice

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 03:48 PM

Hedgehog Pie also did a version of it.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 03:49 PM

it was the SOLDIER not her husband who beat and kicked her -


People asked her where she was going,
She made not an answer, she couldn't say where,
For she'd been away to sea with the soldier.

When Peggy got back, it was late in the night,
And she was ashamed to be seen,
It was under the window she's listened a while,
To her husband a-nursing the baby.

"Now hushaba little one and don't you cry,
For your momma's gone and left you in sorrow,

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 04:00 PM

Les, in singing a song like this, you are reporting something that happened. You're not making any judgements on how people behave by singing it.

Yes, I'd sing it.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 05:40 PM

thanks again, again, McGrath spots the tension and the problem. The song is easy to engage but it needs to be sung carefully and sensitively because as most people have pointed out the plot is not simple or easy to reconcile.

Not William S but not bad for a folk song, if that's what it is

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 06:08 PM

The song derives from a broadside of the early-to-mid 17th century, in which Peggy comes home simply because she has run out of money; her husband forgives her. There are a couple of later editions at  Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

A new ballad of the souldier and Peggy

Sets from oral tradition are quite rare. There are two texts in the DT. PEGGY AND THE SOLDIER is taken from Martin Carthy's recording. It contains a lot of material that isn't in the only English traditional text I know of (and which he implied was his source) - I don't know where he got the rest of it. Perhaps it was adapted from THE LAME SOLDIER, collected by Lomax in Indiana. There's a Scottish version in the Greig-Duncan collection, but I don't think it had been published at the time.

See also the set at The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection:

Peggy And The Soldier

So far as I can remember, the Hedgehog Pie "version" was an arrangement of the Carthy redaction, not an independent one.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 08:18 PM

"It reminds me of the 'Demon Lover' "

That had occurred to me. I suppose it's a story that has always happened from time to time (and still does), and people imagine how it might end up in different ways, either by making up different songs, or by adjusting and interpeting existing songs in different ways.

Threre's an echo of the Wraggle Taggle Gypsies family of songs too - both in the situation and even in the text -

John, her husband, he mounted on his high horse back,
He rode until he came to the water.

It's like a kind of sequel, but with the Gypsy turned to a Soldier, and imagined as a brute.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Abby Sale
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 11:59 PM

Would I sing it? Can't imagine why not. I have many, many times.
It's a very mild story as these things go. No murder, no death at all; no naughty words (but some good cursing), no politics, no blackmail, no racism - nearly a children's song.   

I learned this from President Taylor in 1966. He sang the Carthy version. Being too lazy to get up and look at the LP notes, I looked at the words & notes in the Carthy unofficial website. Carthy relates it, as Mary does above, to the House Carpenter songs.

I enjoyed the mistransription at that website:

They hadn't been sailing a week or more
When her love oh it turned to anger
He bit her and he kicked her he called her horse
And he back to her John in the morning

A bit more on its history:
Roud (#907)gives a reference-only entry (no text) for Peggy and the Soldier in Wm. Thackeray's broadside list (c1689)

Malcolm - I don't find a reference in G~D (though I often miss them). I see a ref to The Gallant soldier - Roud #5792. It's sometimes called (elsewhere) Peggy and the Soldier but seems to be a completely different song.

Roud lists the item Carthy (as you say) seems to be referencing - the text in Journal of the Folk-Song Society in 1930. That, says Roud, is from Dorset : Lackington (they also reprint a text in the Skene MS of mid 1600's.) Roud also gives a different English field reference to Peggy Went up the Street from a manuscript collection of Cecil Sharp, Folk Words p.256.

Anyway, it's a fine song.   It goes right in there with my list of trad songs involving "Truly Pissed Off People." All of a sudden at the end, Husband comes up from being a wipped wimp (see ROCKING THE CRADLE) to the strong character of the piece. You just wouldn't want to risk sailing on any boat builded by the man that builded Soldier's boat - or on any waters on which it might have sailed.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 12:47 AM

The G-D reference is to Her Soldier (vol 6, 125-6). I don't have that one. Bruce Olson put the earliest date at about 1635. The other Peggy and the soldier is better known nowadays as Mary and her Gallant Soldier, I think; as you say, it's a completely different song.

"He bit her and he kicked her he called her horse"... I like that. What will they think of next!

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 10:16 AM

Is this a request ?

Seriously I've never really considered applying political correctness to traditional folk songs. Even if many of them do breach modern social mores, I believe that these differences are an important issue in understanding how people felt in the past and how things have changed. Too many good songs would be lost or become merely of accademic interest if we go too far down that path. We might as well stop singing songs about sailing ships because they are no longer used commercially on any serious scale.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 10:19 AM

or those with swords, horses, shilings...

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 03:07 PM

We cannot easily or always tell folk songs from old songs because they overlap. Lots of old songs contain offensive references to black people, jewish people, women, children and so on.

Most singers and most audiences don't want to cause offence or hear offensive material. Whilst sailing ships cannot be offended people can.

That is why I raised the issue of Peggy and I feel clearer about singing a song in which a woman gets treated in a way most of us would not treat women.

As for political correctness, it seems that we need some guidlines when speaking, writing or singing about people who are not in a position to reply.

If people want to study the characterisation of e.g. black people in 19C sea songs, they should read them all and say what they find. I guess nobody much would want to go on and sing some of the songs that contain offensive references.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 03:56 PM

Even if many of them do breach modern social mores

What "modern social mores" is it suggested that this song breaches? Actually, make the horse a car, maybe, and it'd be a story that could happen tonight anywhere.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Compton
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 05:50 PM

To the original question, yes if I could get my teeth round it...and the words would stick in my brain!!

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 06:09 PM

If the genre stopped singing songs that are abrasive to modern ears and modern mores wouldn't that be a cop out. Do we just exist to perform and amuse or do we also have a duty to inform and sustain.

It's a dilemma that I confront every time I sing a whaling or foxhunting song. I have chosen to continue singing them mainly because they have good tunes and story-lines and also because I believe they should be sustained in real time and not just in manuscripts and databases.

Spot (the anti-whaling and non foxhunting)Dog

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 06:15 PM

Having said that we have recently been asked to sing a song called My Brother Silvest. I have collected about four versions of this song one of which would find us in the courts for racism. We have chosen to edit the song of it's racist content and sing the unoffensive verses. But the decision does not rest easy with us. My view would be to drop it and upset the piper (he who pays).

Life just aint simple.

Spot

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 06:53 PM

So, censorship on another thread!

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 07:13 PM

Gently Richard.....perhaps self censorship is OK?

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 07:16 PM

Touche!

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 08:05 PM

But what is there in this song to make anyone feel it would merit censorship? (Unless it was sung in a way that seemed to celebrate the events contained, but that's not the song, it's the performance.)

Songs can exist in many variants. I see nothing wrong with choosing a variant that fits in with what you wish to say. Or, for that matter, giving birth to a fresh variant of your own. The variants have to have come from somewhere, after all, and the history of a song's development hasn't necessarily stopped, just because it's reached you.

There's an analogy with jokes. The same joke can be told in a way that is racist or non-racist. And there's no duty to tell the racist version just because that's the way we heard it, or to refrain from telling it in some other way.

For example, the joke about the men talking about how they named their children after various saints, because they were born on the saints' days, and then one says he called his son "Pancake" for the same reason - it actually becomes unfunny, when it's told in an Englishman, Scotsman and Thick Paddy way, whereas if they are just three unspecified friends, it can be quite a good one.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 19 Mar 04 - 01:41 PM

"My view would be to drop it and upset the piper (he who pays)".

People who are offended by old songs don't generally pay anything much.

To be fair I think my original question has been well explored in the thoughtful way that these threads do.

Self cencorship in a climate of intollerance is worst than cencorship from powers that be. But that's not the issue.

I sing the song The Beggar - Dave Burland et al. It contains the line:

Neither Jew nor Turk will make me work whilst begging is as good as it is.

I feel it inappropriate to explain the historical significance and then distance myself. I simply sing

Their's no one who will make me work.......

I bit of history is lost but my country, my community, my folk club and my circle of friends include 'Jews and Turks'.

A very large number of women have been victims of male violence and I don't think we should sing songs without considering the historical context of that experience as well as that of the songs.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Mar 04 - 04:45 PM

Worried about songs that "violate today's mores"?

Fergoo'nessakes, the woman in this song violated THAT day's mores!
As well as today's.

What's more, it's a standard characteristic of the traditional ballads that they relate a story, and don't take sides! Or to put it another way, set up a dramatic conflict and then show it resolved by some means. What to make of it is left up to the singer and listener.

If you're going to censor or self-censor a folk-type song because it violates today's mores, would you reject or try to rewrite The Wee Cooper o' Fife? Much more objectionable than Peggy if you're looking for offense!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 19 Mar 04 - 07:31 PM

The song My Brother Sylvest I talked about contained some absolute words that offended me. In the 1920's (I guess this to be the approx date of the song) The line "Have you heard about the Jeffries Johnson fight Where the big buck Nigger fought the white" may have been acceptable but now they are repugnant and racist. The rest of the verse contains words of how he eventually wants to fight Jack Dempsey.

The absolute word I spoke about is obvious. It occurs in old shanties and other victorian songs but has no place in modern parlance. I have a natural desire to maintain my traditional culture but happily forego this at the expense of another's culture who existed in the west entirely due to the slave trade.

Regardless of my desire to sustain traditional songs , my abhorrence of exploitation and racism forbids me to even contemplate singing these songs.

I am white so perhaps another view may be different and may be not so sensitive. It's a tricky subject and perhaps best left alone.

Spot.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Mar 04 - 08:16 PM

Songs always change, both the actual songs we sing, and the way we sing them.

Otherwise we'd be singing in Middle English and not understanding a word of what we sang.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Abby Sale
Date: 19 Mar 04 - 11:52 PM

Ah! "Her Soldier." Greig gives a general title "The Old Soldier" from its first line there. It implies Greig must have been familiar with other versions that he didn't actually collect. Far as I can tell, it was not in one of his few published works. Other than Arthur Argo, few ever saw the manuscripts so no, Carthy is unlikely in the extreme to have found it in Greig.

This version sort of includes both endings. Husband rejects her and strongly makes her leave but then she "walks up and down." Husband sees the people sympathize with her and he relents and lets her come home.

As to its politics, that's crap. There's just nothing so vile and hateful in the song as to overturn its literary, historical & musical value. One might as well censor, expurgate or Bowdlerize The Merchant of Venice, Huck Finn, half of Burns and much of the Bible. And that's been done in each case.

Further, it's her paramour, nor her husband that abuses her. She's the one that abandoned home, hearth, husband and baby.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: LadyJean
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 12:09 AM

Madame Bovary cheats on her husband and kills herself with arsenic, when things don't work out. The book's considered a classic. I reccomend reading the arsenic bit in the original. You miss a lot that way.
As a general rule I don't think much of people of either sex who cheat on their spouses.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 07:51 AM

Spot on spot and spot on McGrath and thanks to you all

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: DonMeixner
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 08:20 AM

I will not stop singing a song because of it's apparent lack of political correctness. Songs of this nature are historical documents and glimpses into the past. I won't rewrite history unless what we have learned of it is incorrect and I won't rewrite a song unless it promotes racism.

Songs like Peggy and The Soldier were mini-morality plays like Pills O' White Mercury and meant to teach a lesson. Lessons good in 1759 and good in 2004.

Don

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 09:09 AM

Most times when we decide what to learn we make judgements about the content of the song and when we sing we make some kind of judgement about the audience.

Is their some kind of continuum between good judgement and some kind of censorship?

I guess PC can 'go mad' as people often say. But this can be an excuse for not considering some, usually a minority of the audience, are going to feel about the song.

Stereotypes are easy targets for humour. I guess people from Cheshire are sick and tired of being characterised as new-rich country fools with no sense of heritage, who live in a flat boring place and do made up Morris dances. I have heard people use such a stereotype and get a laugh but I guess the same people wouldn't use the same jokes in clubs in south Cheshire. Good judgement and some kind of censorship?

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: DonMeixner
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 01:33 PM

Les,

I am often unclear what constitutes censorship. I am sure that a government declaring what can be read, seen, sung, and written is censorship. I believe that an editorial policy on what is published by a comic book company is not. The difference being that the government is applying the policy to everyone while the comic book company is only stating their policy on what they will publish in their books. If you draw a comic that Marvel Entertainment won't publish but Darhorse will you haven't been censored.

The only censorship that should be allowed is self censorship. Lets face it The Darktown Strutters Ball may or may not be a racist tune but perception aften becomes reality and to many people this is a racisit tune. I think fool hardy would be how I'd describe singing this song to a bi-racial audience in a general setting. Probably any audience in a general setting. Your decision to leave this song unsung isn't censorship it is wisdom. It isn't censorship because you chose not to sing it.

I think a sponsor or a venue has the right to say what is allowed from their stage. The performer can agree to those terms or play elswhere at a venue more suited to the music.

Lastly this is a very gray area. Many people will view any policy that disallows some art to be displayed or performed at one venue to be censorship. I don't.

I do remember I was a serious worry to my parents because I'd sing Phil Och's anti-war songs and they didn't meet with my Dad's republican mind set. I'd sing Baly James Duff (The Garden of Eden) and my girl friend who was in the throes of the new woman's movement would beat me up about sexist view of the song and the racist third verse.

Don

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Mar 04 - 01:45 PM

"a racist tune" - I can't see how you can have a racist tune. A song yes, but that's not the same thing. One tune can have a dozen songs attached to it. Is that a linguistic quibble? Perhaps, but I keep on coming across people using the word in that way, and it blurs meaning.

............................

Cheshire? Down this end of the country the only associations that really has are cheese and cats.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: DonMeixner
Date: 21 Mar 04 - 01:06 AM

Mac you are right. And it is the kind of quibble I like. The same mind set makes all snowmobiles Skidoos, all servicemen and women soldiers, and all music whether it is sung or instrumental, a tune.

I should have said a "racist song."

(Info just for the fun of it-----In Rhythym Riots and Revolution, the Reverend Billy James Hargis identified two Doc Watson instrumentals as communist inspired)

Don

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Mar 04 - 06:22 AM

It always amuses me that two people can hear the same tune, and have totally different words, with totally different associations, going throught their mine. For example, one is hearing the Red Flag, and the other is hearing Maryland. One is hearing God Save the Queen, andteh other is hearing My Country Tis of Thee.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Garry Gillard
Date: 27 Dec 05 - 11:30 PM

Finding this thread in connexion with looking at this song again because of the fine recording of it by Martin Simpson on Kind Letters, I am disappointed to read the note from Abby Sale (17 March 2004).

Abby refers to my admittedly ridiculous mistranscription of one line ("horse" instead of "whore"), but he didn't tell me of my mistake so that I could correct it - and it's been there for five years now.

Garry

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 12:02 AM

Reinhard Zierke was running the site at the time Abby mentioned the mishearing. There wouldn't have been much point in telling you about it at that juncture, since you weren't maintaining it any longer.

It's not gone unnoticed that those sites have disappeared recently, so it's good to hear that you have once again taken up the reins and they are back online. Best of luck with it all; and, as before, if you want a hand with anything, let us know.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Garry Gillard
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 12:26 AM

You're right as usual, Malcolm. I didn't think of the timing. In my mind, I was (and am) still responsible for what I'd put up.

I'm still expecting Reinhard's material to reappear somewhere, but I also think I should continue to support my now inferior version of the Waterson/Carthy archive.

I'm more grateful than I can say for your message and your offer of support.

Garry

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 09:15 AM

The only "non-PC" aspect of this I can see, as a woman, is the same feature I sometimes see in blues. And that is, the potential for stereotyping women as cheaters, lowlifes-- "Eve" as the source of sin and all the world's ills.

Frankly, I hate PC. But I do get tired of music that's oriented toward the negative in any form, especially when it's a musician's sole subject. Probably my sensitivity in that regard comes from knowing people well, in relationship, who take no responsibility for making any effort in the relationship and who then sing, loudly, all the bad-wimmin blues songs there ARE. :~)

It's not the song, per se, that is (might be) offensive. It's the blaminess of the singer. I don't see anyone in this thread as having that attitude! :~) But if I were in your audience, and your whole set were made of "victim" ballads-- during the break I might ask you what's up with that, or simply leave.

The PC war often to forget that the audience can usually vote with the feet. :~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Mo the caller
Date: 28 Dec 05 - 05:44 PM

I have an LP "Second Album" with that song on.
One of the things I like about Martin Carthy is the variety in his work, and I was struck by the different women on this LP. "The maid on the shore" and the girl with "Her box on her head" come out on top. Must listen to it again when I can get at the record player.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Abby Sale
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 09:53 AM

Garry, truly no dis intended. I think that's why I didn't show a link to the site. But, yes, I might have tried to send a note somewhere suggesting some editing. There were (as I recall from back then - I haven't looked recently) a number of oddities in the text. But I wouldn't scoff the totality - it's fine and I've used it myself many times.

Still, although it's not quite a real Mondegreen (that is, not a true "zersung" line - the meaning of the line remains correct and it's sound is close enough; only the specific word is wrong) it's funny, anyway.

In rereading the thread, however, I realize I haven't sung "Wee Cooper" in years. In this era of growing concern for a wife's secure place in the family, the song might help remind us that a wife should concede to her husband's wishes. It's a fine old moral ballad (Child #277) with a good tune. I think I'll sing it at the club this weekend.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 11:43 AM

I was interested to find that, in the DT listing at the top of this thread, there are FOUR links to Peggy and the Soldier, and FOUR links to The Lame Soldier, and the content of each is identical, down to the initials of the original poster. No "Lame Soldier" text at all.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 06:51 PM

The Lame Soldier and Peggy texts are different, and were provided by different people (Abby Sale and Dick Greenhaus, I think). The multiple links are down to the database failure earlier this year. There should be one only for each; this will be corrected in due course.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Garry Gillard
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 08:03 PM

Thanks for your kind note, Abby: I should not have taken it all so seriously, especially as it was funny. My "horse" is defensible: I guess I was thinking that the sailor had to "call her horse" so that she could ride back on it - altho in the very next line she is explicitly walking! Anyway, I've done my best to correct the whole text: Peggy and the Soldier.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 29 Dec 05 - 09:11 PM

Martin's text is in any case either his own re-working (or Bert Lloyd's) of the two texts mentioned above; with just perhaps some input from the broadside test (but more likely some from Lloyd's fertile imagination).

At all events, it's unlikely that the song was ever sung in that form in real life. For what it's worth, the set noted by the Hammond brothers from Mr G Dowden of Lackington contained the verse

They had not been sailing past two weeks or three
Before Peggy and the soldier they could not agree.
He huffed her, he bruised her, he called her sea-whore
And bid her go back to her cuckold once more.

(Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol 8 issue 34 (1930) pp 196-7)

The Lomax set (as quoted in the DT) has

They had not been sailing more than two weeks or three,
Till Peg and her soldier they two disagreed;
He kicked her and he cuffed her and he called her whore,
He bid her adieu to her own country.

As I've said, that episode doesn't appear in the original broadside song; so the issue here is really a discussion of a modern interpretation or re-write of the late 1960s, based on material found in oral currency in the early part of the 20th century.

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Dec 05 - 04:19 AM

So, would you sing this beast of the oral and written traditon?

Subject: RE: Would you sing Peggy and the Soldier
From: Mo the caller
Date: 30 Dec 05 - 06:31 AM

Malcolm says
"At all events, it's unlikely that the song was ever sung in that form in real life."
Butisn't Martrin Carthy real, or alive? Surely that's what tradition is, people singing things the way that feels right to them.