The rest is very much the same as our version. I also heard it sung by a worker at the Aller Potteries, near Newton Abbot. Mr. Kidson has obtained a traditional version in Yorkshire, and Mr. C. Sharp one in Somersetshire from Eliza Hutchins of Langport. As the accent came wrong in the version we received from Hard, we have adopted that as given by Eliza Hutchins.
[27.] The Bonny Bunch of Roses. Of this we have taken down a great number of versions. The melody is always the same. The youth in the printed Broadside copies is always Napoleon Bonaparte. History does not agree with what is said of the hero in the song. It is almost certainly an anti-Jacobite production, adapted to Napoleon, with an additional verse relative to Moscow. In the Broadside versions the song is given "To the tune of the Bunch of Roses, O!" indicating that there was an earlier ballad of the same nature.
This was a favourite fo'castle song in the middle of the nineteenth century. There is a version of it in Christie's "Traditional Ballads." One has also been recovered by Mr. Kidson in Yorkshire. The song was such a favourite that a public-house near Wakefield bears "The Bonny Bunch of Roses, O!" as its sign.
[28.] The Last of the Singers. The melody taken down from William Huggins, mason, of Lydford, who died in March 1889. He had been zealously engaged that winter going about among his ancient musical friends collecting old songs for me, when he caught a chill and died. The words he gave were those of the ballad, "The Little Girl down the Lane," and were of no merit. I have therefore discarded them and written fresh words, and dedicate them to the memory of poor old Will.
[29.] The Tythe Pig. Words and air taken from Robert Hard. Sung also by J. Helmore. The song appears on Broadsides by Disley, Jackson of Birmingham, Harkness of Preston, Catnach, and others. There are ten verses in the original. I have cut them down to seven.
[30.] Old Wichet. Taken from Thomas Darke of Whitstone. He had learned it in 1835 from a fellow labourer. Sung also by James Parsons, Samuel Fone, and J. Woodrich. It is said to be still popular in the North of England. A Scottish version in Herd's Collection, 1769, and in Johnson's "Musical Museum," Edinburgh, 1787-1803, vol. v. p. 437. "Old Wichet" is in the Roxburgh Collection, and Bell has printed it in his "Ballads and Songs of the English Peasantry."
Dr. Arnold recast the song to a tune of his own in "Auld Robin Gray," 1794. The Scottish version begins—
"The good man cam hame at e'en
And hame cam he.
And there he saw a saddle horse
Where nae horse should be."
Dr. Arnold begins—