George Mount – Kent Trad: songs sung in Kent

Reportedly sung by George Mount, Cheriton.

‘The Shop Walker’ was a comic song composed by George Le Brunn with lyrics by Walter de Frece, published by Charles Sheard & Co in 1891 or 1892. In 1903 the song entered the repertoire of the well known music hall performer Dan Leno, and was described on the cover of subsequent sheet music printings as “Sung with greatest possible success by Dan Leno”, and his “celebrated pantomime patter song” – see https://www.vandaimages.com/2009CR8416-Song-sheet-cover-featuring-Dan-Leno-in-Walter-de.html.

According to Wikipedia

“The Shopwalker” was full of comic one-liners and was heavily influenced by pantomime. Leno played the part of a shop assistant, again of manic demeanour, enticing imaginary clientele into the shop before launching into a frantic selling technique sung in verse.[1]

Leno recorded the song on a disc issued by The Gramophone Co. Ltd. In July 1903, and it was subsequently taken up by other performers including Harry Bluff and Sandy Powell- and, no doubt, by many amateur performers around the country.¹

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Leno, accessed 4 January 2025. ↩︎

Reportedly sung by George Mount, Cheriton.

Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 8^th September 1923

Roud 413

The cuckoo is a pretty bird,
She sings as she flies;
She brings us good tidings,
And tells us no lies.
She sucks little birds’ eggs
To make her voice clear;
She never sings ‘Cuckoo,’
Till summer is near.

Widely collected by the early twentieth century folk song collectors. Cecil Sharp, for example, found numerous versions, in Somerset, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire – and in the Appalachian mountains of the USA. The song was included in English Folk-Songs for Schools collected and arranged by Sabine Baring Gould and Cecil Sharp, published by J. Curwen & Sons Ltd., 1906, so it is entirely possible that George Mount’s grandchildren would have sung it in school. We have no information on George’s version beyond the verse quoted above, nor where he had learned the song.

Reportedly sung by George Mount, Cheriton.

Roud 133

This song is known by various titles, including ‘Green Grow the Rushes, O’, ‘The Twelve Apostles’, ‘The Dilly Song’, and ‘The Ten Commandments’. Collectors such as Sharp and Baring-Gould found the song in England and North America, and a version from Dorset was included in Lucy Broadwood’s English County Songs (1893). She gave a set of words as printed in the Eton College Rifle Volunteer Corps’ publication Camp choruses, and the song continues to be included in Scout campfire song books today.

See Lucy Broadwood and J.A. Fuller Maitland, English County Songs, pp154-159, https://archive.org/details/englishcountyson00broa/page/154/mode/2up

Tag: George Mount

The Shop walker

The Cuckoo

I’ll sing you one, O