Recorded by Mike Yates, St Marys Cray, 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/43 (VWML 13 CDA Yates)
Box upon her head
Recorded by Mike Yates, Orpington, 12th September 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/46 (VWML 15 CDA Yates)
Toast: The little bee’s
Recorded by Mike Yates, Orpington, 12th September 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/46 (VWML 15 CDA Yates)
The little bee’s up aloft,
A-making the little honey,
The soldiers do the dirty work,
And the bookies get your money!
Toast: Lending and spending and giving away
Recorded by Mike Yates, Orpington, 12th September 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/46 (VWML 15 CDA Yates)
Lending and spending and giving away,
Is the three easiest things you can do on a day.
But working, and borrowing, and earning your own
Is the three hardest things that ever was known.
Here’s to the man that’s industrious,
Here’s to the man that works hard for his brass
And never denies his own country.
The world is round and so is the wheel
The sting of death we all must feel.
If life was a thing that money would buy,
The rich would live and the poor would die.
The Brake of Brambles
Recorded by Mike Yates, St Marys Cray, 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/43 (VWML 13 CDA Yates)
Roud 47479
The words are so fragmentary that it’s not possible to say of which song this is a version. Steve Roud has therefore – reluctantly – assigned the song its very own Roud number.
The Cuckoo
Recorded by Mike Yates, St Marys Cray, 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/43 (VWML 13 CDA Yates)
Seventeen come Sunday
Recorded by Mike Yates, St Marys Cray, 1973
Mike Yates collection, British Library Sound Archive C 796/43 (VWML 13 CDA Yates)
Botany Bay
From Joseph Jones
Recorded by Mike Yates, Orpington, October 1973
Folk Music Journal Vol 3 No 1 (1975)
Ripest Apples
The Pear Tree
From Joseph Jones
Recorded by Mike Yates, Kent, January 1975
Folk Music Journal Vol 3 No 1 (1975)
Although a comparatively rare song, versions have been collected in East Anglia, Yorkshire, Scotland and Ireland, while Steve Gardham has found the same story in a seventeenth century black-letter ballad, ‘The Crost Couple’.
The original recording from which this transcription made does not seem to have been included in the copies of Mike Yates’ tapes lodged with the British Library or the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.