From Mr Coomber
Collected by Anne Geddes Gilchrist, Withyham, Sussex, May 1907
Anne Geddes Gilchrist Collection AGG/3/6/14, AGG/8/27
The song was included in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, 1959, with a somewhat more coherent set of words than Thomas Coomber had sung. Malcolm Douglas, writing in the revised edition, Classic English Folk Songs (EFDSS, 2003), identifies the additions as having come from printed broadsides, and the version sung to H.E.D. Hammond by Mrs Gulliver of Combe Florey in Somerset (HAM/2/2/23). He also refers to Frank Kidson’s statement that a “gentleman soldier” was one in a yeomanry regiment, and suggests that Anne Gilchrist’s note “sung in camp” indicates that Thomas Coomber had served in the local militia, and had learned the song at a militia camp.
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