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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST Date: 04 Sep 19 - 01:10 PM cushy-doo is a NE term for a dove (pigeon)- maybe a term of lovers' endearment originating from the Irish- John McCormack's 'Macushla' is used as exactly this in that excellent song. nb guest- Cushat Law is a very claggy Cheviot- the SNP are welcome to it |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Richie Date: 04 Sep 19 - 04:45 AM Geordie Ridleys"Cushy Butterfield" was almost certainly a parody of Harry Clifton's "Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green" |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: MickyMan Date: 03 Sep 19 - 09:50 PM Here in upper state New York at the Pickin' And Singin' Gathering, Greg Clarke has been singing a version of Cushy Butterfield for decades. His version also has a verse which mentions that her ample breasts looking like two little boys fighting under the sheets. |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Morris-ey Date: 14 May 18 - 12:50 PM She was a cousin of Alice Crutchfield who was the subject of a Black Country (UK Midlands) song. |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST Date: 14 May 18 - 12:13 PM cushy-doo- NE word for a pigeon/dove Cushat Law- one of the Cheviot Hills |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Guest Tim Date: 14 May 18 - 11:51 AM But Geordie Ridley died in 1864. So Elizabeth Butterfield can't have been Cushie. Maybe she was a descendant... |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Chirsty Date: 16 Apr 11 - 06:55 AM Elizabeth Jane Butterfield, married to Anthony Rutherford in 1891 was my Great-grandmother.She was born in 1869 in Gateshead in the Parish of Haworth, Durham |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Frank Lee Date: 14 Aug 10 - 09:25 AM Sorry, the last poster was me. Must've forgotten to add my name. |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST Date: 13 Aug 10 - 04:35 AM As far as I know, Cushie was indeed Elizabeth Butterfield (see above). She was, I believe, the daughter of a well-to-do owner of a fleet of keels. How she came to be a clay seller, if in fact she did, I don't know. The adjective 'cushie' was always used to describe something very good - 'cool' these days - in my Durham childhood, as was 'custy'. |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Gurney Date: 13 Aug 10 - 03:51 AM A moment of pedantry: Cus: A kiss. North of England. Cushion: A riotous kind of dance, formerly very common at weddings, generally accompanied with kissing. Cushy-Cow-Lady: a Ladybird. All from the Dictionary of Archaic Words, along with others mentioned above. |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Raggytash Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:30 PM If Mike Neville said it then it must be true ! |
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Subject: RE: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,geordie bob Date: 12 Aug 10 - 04:55 PM Cushie was a gateshead lass that used to collect clay and sell it door to door for people to scrub their steps with, it paid for her beer as she could drink any man under the table. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST Date: 20 Aug 08 - 04:43 PM I am indeed a direct descendent of Cushie Butterfield, although I dont know a great deal about her. There was a TTTV programme about her hosted by Mike Neville years ago, at which my Grandmother and Great Aunt were guests. I'd be interested in any information. Lynn |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Geordie-Peorgie Date: 23 Aug 07 - 01:48 PM Me Da' once telt uz that 'Cushie' wez a derivation (big word for a blacksmith) of the 'celtic' Mecushla, meanin' 'Darlin' or 'Sweetheart' Anyway it's a crackin' bit song and nee matter where ye are EVERYBODY knaahs the chorus - Did ye knaah that there's another thread 'up there' aboot this an' aall? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Ron Davies Date: 22 Aug 07 - 08:16 PM English couple I know had (sadly, past tense) a cat they called Cushy. Truly, a big lass and a bonnie lass. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: goatfell Date: 22 Aug 07 - 08:32 AM here's a page frae the interweb tom Cushy life of the keelman's love From the Northern Echo, first published Wednesday 30th Jun 2004. CUSHY Butterfield, it will be recalled, was a big lass and a bonny lass who liked a couple of beers, could be seen on Sandgate when the herring boats came in but came (by whatever pronunciation) from across the river in Gateshead. Her song, famously filched to sell Newcastle Brown Ale - "It's a fine beer and a bottled beer with the North's biggest sale" - may be Tyneside's best known after The Blaydon Races itself: Aa's a brocken hearted keelman and aa's ower heels in luv Wiv a young lass from Gatesheed and aa call her my dove, Her nyem's Cushy Butterfield and she sells yella clay And her cousin's a muckman, and they caal him Tom Gray. Though neither pretty nor perfumed ("like a bagful of sawdust tied round wiv a string") Cushy had at least one admirer - that poor, lovesick, caffy-hearted keelman. She became so famous that she even merits a file in The Northern Echo library (listed under "D" for dead) and in 1988, had the bar on Newcastle Central station named after her. Our picture, coyly captioned "Miss C Butterfield", was the pub sign. Note the unblushing tattoo. We mention all this following last week's note on "cushy", a colloquial term for a cow as well as a word meaning "easy" or "soft". Where does that leave Miss Butterfield, asks Peter Sotheran in Redcar - was she simply a bit on the bovine side, or was Sandgate really Easy Street? Today's column, in other words, is yet another Cushy number. What's little remembered is that the song has a final verse, suggesting that the confused keelman might all the time have been taken for a trip along the Tyne: Noo, aa hear she's another chap, an' he hews at Shipcote If aa thowt she'd deceive me, aa'd sure cut me throat, Aal down the river sailin', an sing "Aa'm afloat" Biddin' adoo to Cushy Butterfield an' the chap at Shipcote. Was Cushy Butterfield just a woman of easy virtue, or is there nowt so funny as folk songs? History doesn't tell us; Gadfly readers might. PETER Sotheran is also much involved with the Sir William Turner Almshouses in Coatham, whose anniversary service was last Thursday evening - the same time as England played Portugal and Switzerland. In answer to the suggestion that they might have picked a better night, Peter's e-mail is succinct: "Presumably Sir Wm T's copy of Nostradamus did not include the schedule of football matches for 2004 when he elected to open the Almshouses on June 24, 1674." SEVERAL other readers confirm that "cush" or "cushy" refers to cows - though not just in the North-East. Ian Forsyth and Martin Snape, both in Durham and not for the same time on the same wavelength, independently recall a mournful folk song with the chorus "Cusha, cusha, cusha calling, ere the early dew was falling." Adapted from a Victorian one-hit wonder, The High Tide on the Lincolnshire Coast, by Jean Ingelow, it was about a milkmaid who went out to bring in the cattle and floated home dead on the flood. From distant childhood, Martin also recalls a nursery rhyme beginning: "Cushy cow bonny, let down your milk." It is just as Ian Forsyth observes, they don't make 'em like that any more. ERNIE Reynolds in Wheatley Hill offers a rather more delicate suggestion. "Ask any Desert Rat in the 8th Army about 'cush' and he'll remember it well. It was probably the first Arabic word he learned. The second might have been shufti, as in "shufti cush", the most genteel English equivalent being "Dinah, Dinah show us your leg." Some words may never have travelled beyond a single area, however. Ernie recalls that, while a fireman in Cyprus, the brigade had to be covered by the Army because of the Eoka threat. After helping put out a blaze, he was eating an apple and asked one of the soldiers which part of Middlesbrough he happened to be from. "How on earth do you know I'm from Middlesbrough?" asked the astonished squaddie, and was reminded that he'd just asked for the gorker. The Boro, insists Ernie, is the only place in England where the apple core is known as a gorker. The rest of us, presumably, are just gowks. SOME definitions are altogether newer. Lynn Briggs, now in Darlington but born across the great pond, forwards the winners of the Washington Post's annual word contest. They include willy-nilly ("impotent"), flabbergasted ("appalled at how fat you've grown"), abdicate ("to give up all hope of having a flat stomach") and gargoyle ("an olive flavoured mouthwash"). The best remains "negligent" - "the absent minded condition in which you answer the front door in your nightie". LAST week's column noted a train journey from Sugar Loaf station on the Heart of Wales line, thus increasing its patronage from 99 passengers a year to 100. Eric Smallwood in Middlesbrough suggests that we were keen to get out: Sugar Loaf has a vineyard, too. AGAIN hit by power cuts in last week's storms, pub landlady Ann Kreft of The Bridge at Stapleton, near Darlington, told the Darlington and Stockton Times that it was "like living in the 16th century". Her exasperation is understandable, her history more questionable. In the 16th century, they went to bed at sunset. It's exactly 125 years since Sunderland-born Joseph Swan invented the light bulb. His home in Low Fell was the first in the world to have electric lighting, the second was Sir William Armstrong's Cragside at Rothbury, Northumberland. Swan, later in conjunction with Thomas Edison, also opened the world's first electric light bulb factory at Benwell, Newcastle. Memory, for some reason, suggested that he had Cockfield connections, but was luminously mistaken. Cockfield wasn't switched onto mains electricity until 1932; they'll get round to Stapleton eventually. ...and finally, the Gadfly column in the financial section of the Mail on Sunday - an altogether inferior, Johnny-come-lately sort of a creature - reports a lunchtime speech to the Institute of Economic Affairs by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, chaplain to the Stock Exchange and sometimes saturnine columnist in these parts. Peter was again looking on the blight side, his theme "The destruction of our institutions." Two of the 50 guests, including a fellow clergyman, walked out in protest. Another senior city clergyman said he "deeply deprecated" Peter's tone, Lord Howe - the former Tory chancellor - rose during questions and answers to object to his "unreservedly gloomy" world view. "Lord Howe tackles the Rev Doom," said the MoS headline. We return, ever cheerful, next week. www.thisisthenortheast.co..uk /news/gadfly.html Published: ??/??/2004 Archive Home From the Northern Echo http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk © Newsquest Media Group 2004 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 21 Aug 07 - 06:03 PM I think it's generally believed that the word "cushy" is an Anglo-Indian army import, like many other words, coming from the Hindi word khushi. Whether that has anything to do with Cushie Butterfield I have no idea. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,sinky Date: 21 Aug 07 - 01:58 PM A big fat geordie lass,and she has a fair few relatives around tyneside from what ive seen |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: ard mhacha Date: 21 Aug 07 - 12:55 PM The first person I heard singing Cushy Butterfield was Owen Brannigan a fine Bass, a Geordie-Irishman, this would have been around the late 1940s on the Wireless |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Dave the Gnome Date: 21 Aug 07 - 09:07 AM Sandgate, much in the way of most quaysides, is now full of flats that Cushie or her broken hearted keelman could never afford! If the 'yellow clay' was used for door steps is it akin to the 'donkey stones' used in Lancashire then? Cheers Dace |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Counterfit Date: 21 Aug 07 - 07:41 AM The other words are of course "If you want a beer that's porfection indeed Ah'll give y'a guide to fullfillin ya need At home by ya fireside, in club or in bar The sign of good taste is the famous blue star It's a strang beer, it's a bottle beer It's the north biggust sale For complete satusfacshun.. Newcassel Brown Ale NEWCASSEL BROWN ALE" The Cush was also a pub on Scotswood Road opposite Vickers Elswick pulled down in the 70's |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Gurney Date: 02 Mar 07 - 02:53 AM Did no-one but Helen notice the planet Skipy claimed to hail from? Cool! Well, he does come from somewhere coolish. Or..... Is he claiming to originate in Cushie's bra? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,ib48 Date: 01 Mar 07 - 07:30 AM a big fat geordie lass,and i believe she has plenty of relations from what ive seen up there |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: jimlad9 Date: 01 Mar 07 - 05:13 AM First of all thank you to all fellow catters for your help in resolving my query. Since I started this thread I have been in contact with Professor Trevor Pentland proffessor of Geordieology at the University of Morpeth who tells me that Cushie Butterfield was in real life Elizabeth Butterfield and was indeed a big lass and a bonny lass who liked her 'beor'. She did sell 'yaller clay' used for brightening up of doorsteps,these were known as 'donkey-stones' here in SE Lancs. She was free with her favours and had 'flattened some grass in her time' when George Ridley a famous Tyneside Music Hall artiste wrote the song and put it to the tune of 'Polly Perkins of Paddington Green'. Cushie's current paramour a six foot thirteen fisherman took umbrage at the song and made it known around Tyneside that he was going to slap five foot three daft. George went off the stage in Newcastle and went on the next Stage from Newcastle to London where he became the Andrew LLoyd Webber of his day,though not as ugly of course. Finally a number of years ago a work colleague of mine who played the cornet in the English National Youth Brass Band heard me trying to scare the seagulls away by 'singing' ( most notes only heard by canines) the song and said that he did not know that there were words to the tune he knew as Cushie Butterfield and was a well known Brass Band standard. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Dave Hanson Date: 01 Mar 07 - 04:29 AM According to Stephen Sedley, [ The Seeds Of Love, Essex Music 1967 ] it was written by George Ridley as a parody of Pretty Polly Perkins, but it is a distinct improvement. eric |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Prospect Avenue North Date: 28 Feb 07 - 05:34 PM She was a real person who eloped from the Quayside with her lover. Shes a big lass, Shes a bonny las, And she likes her beer, And they caaal her Cushy Butterfield, And i wish she was here! Actually Colin McNaughton is a Wallsend on Tyne lad and he wrote about the cow with the same name! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,micca at work Date: 26 Jan 07 - 06:06 AM BTW Liz, as a former campanologist(with reference to the Jean Ingelow poem linked above) do you know what the "Brides of Enderby" is/was? a Tune? a peal? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Liz the Squeak Date: 26 Jan 07 - 04:40 AM Could be Micca... I know my granfer called his cows to milking by shouting 'cush, cush' to them. They'd turn towards him at the sound of his voice and amble gently down to the milking parlour and into their stalls. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Alec Date: 26 Jan 07 - 03:49 AM I suppose it's possible but I find it interesting that when the narrator means "Coo" he says "Coo" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,Micca at work Date: 26 Jan 07 - 03:42 AM I wonder if the "cows" reference might not have come fromhere? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: The Vulgar Boatman Date: 25 Jan 07 - 05:21 PM Liz - cushie =easy, sweet etc., kushtie = good, sweet etc., same Indoeuropean origins, one here via Romani as you rightly say, the other via (I suspect) the army, as in describing a none life-threatening wound that got you out of the firing line, or an easy job as a cushie one or cushie number. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Joybell Date: 25 Jan 07 - 04:09 PM Ah! That's it Skipy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Rapparee Date: 25 Jan 07 - 03:37 PM Any relation to John? He had more than 2,800 miles. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Scrump Date: 25 Jan 07 - 07:18 AM Bound to be, he's a Geordie isn't he? Although he doesn't talk like one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Alec Date: 25 Jan 07 - 06:34 AM For what it's worth "Yella Clay" was used in the cleaning of doorsteps.I have discovered that there is at least one site out there that claims this song was written by Sting(!) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Liz the Squeak Date: 25 Jan 07 - 06:25 AM You may be confusing cushy with Cushtie, the latter being a shortened Romany word Cushtiepen, which means 'sweet'. I knew a Romany child at school and her mother often called her 'Cushtiepen'. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: gnomad Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:32 PM Cushy is certainly to be found in WW1 literature, and is ascribed a hindustani origin by pte 19022 Frederic Manning in The Middle Parts of Fortune [AKA Her Privates We] first published 1929. Course that doesn't mean he was right, but he was an educated, somewhat scholarly, man. He was also familiar with the language of the ranks, having served as a private in the Somme area in autumn 1916. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: skipy Date: 24 Jan 07 - 05:04 PM Meant = not + Skipy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: skipy Date: 24 Jan 07 - 04:39 PM GOT IT! MID-TEES 1849 - DINSDALE'S GLOSSARY Cushie + childs term for cow! Skipy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: skipy Date: 24 Jan 07 - 04:31 PM Norfolk Dialect cushie = sweets. Skipy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: skipy Date: 24 Jan 07 - 03:41 PM Her eyes is like two holes in a blanket burnt through. Her brows in a morning would spyen* a young cow. And when I hear her shouting "Will you buy any clay ?" Like a candyman's trumpet, it steals my heart away. * "spyen" - dry up a cow's milk. There is a "cow link" in the verse above. Also the book Cushie Butterfield as I put in the second post. Skipy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Joybell Date: 24 Jan 07 - 03:24 PM I seem to recall that "Cushie" is a name for a cow. Can't remember my source. I'll try to find it. Cheers, Joy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: GUEST,ib48 Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:58 AM a big fat geordie,and believe me she has plenty of followers around the bigmarket |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: skipy Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:57 AM No problem Helen, I didn't take it that way all. Skipy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Scrump Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:54 AM Well she being a big and bonny lass, would no doubt possess the attributes of a cushion, regarding the soft and comfortable aspects. So maybe that was how she got "hor nyem". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Helen Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:40 AM Oh, and skipy, I should have put a funny face with my comment. It was in fun, so I'm sorry if it came across as narky. Well, one site says the word "cushy" was first used in writing in World War I, some sites say it is from the Hindi word Khush, meaning pleasant, or from a Persian word. Some sites say it comes from a shotening of the word "cushion", so now I'm even more confused. Helen |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Alec Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:36 AM Thanks Helen you're probably right as this was just conjecture on my part.Also I have noticed that when a man denounces a woman as "easy" he seems to mean "Well I think she may have slept with the other guy but she point blankly refused to do so with me." This seems to be implicitly the position of the narrator of the song in the last verse. (Again conjecture): ) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Helen Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:29 AM Alec, I suspect that the term "cushie" is a relatively recent term (i.e. 20th Century perhaps), and I also suspect that it comes from the word "cushion" so it has more of the meaning of soft & comfortable, so a "cushie life" or a "cushie job" is soft, comfortable, and easy. I'd be very surprised if the other use of "easy", with reference to a woman, is related to that meaning. I'll look up some definition & dictionary sites, and also some dictionaries to see if I'm wrong (or right. Helen |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Charley Noble Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:08 AM I never liked the verse where Cushie gets all sentimental when her lover offers to marry her: "Then she started a blubbing and she roared like a bull..." Sentimental claptrap as an old Bristol friend used to say! Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: Who Was Cushie Butterfield?. From: Bat Goddess Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:55 AM I agree with Helen -- this should be above the line. Back in the '70s some time (my "popular" folk era before I discovered true traditional) I learned "Cushie McCoy" obviously derived from "Cushie Butterfield" from The Irish Rovers' TV show (perhaps written by them). "She's a big lass and a bonny lass And she'll make your head spin. Old Cushie's in fine shape For the shape that she's in." Linn |
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