The singer proceeds to eat the foot, then the leg, the thigh, the rump, the wing, the back, the breast, the neck, the head; and then the dance was concluded. A Breton version in Luzel, p. 80. I have written fresh words to the tune.
This tune is in the Dorian mode. As sung by J. Masters, the E was sharpened in the 3rd bar but flattened on the repetition of the same phase in the penultimate bar. Mr. Sheppard, when arranging the song, flattened the E throughout. It must be one thing or the other. Flattened throughout, it makes a charming melody, but the last flattened E was probably due to the singer's memory failing him in the latter part of the air, but serving him at the beginning of the tune. Mr. Sharp has accordingly retained the E natural throughout. The opening phrase is similar to the Plain-Song Easter Carol, "O Filii et Filiæ." This was a melody used in French folk-song for the welcoming in of spring. In fact, a May song. It forced its way into the service of the Church, and was adopted and used for the Easter Sequence. See Tiersot, op. cit., pp. 361, 391. It is certainly curious finding the same in Devonshire folk-music. Neither Mr. Sheppard nor I observed it; it was pointed out by Mr. Sharp.
[80.] Constant Johnny. Words and melody taken down from Roger Luxton. It was a dialogue, and so Mr. Sheppard had arranged it. Such lover dialogues are and were very commonly sung in farmhouses. Ravenscroft gives one in broad Devonshire in his "Brief Discourse," 1614, entitled, "Hodge Trellindle and his Zweethart Malkyn." Our ballad seems to be based on "Doubtful Robin and Constant Nanny," circ. 1680, in the "Roxburgh Ballads."
These dialogue songs between a lover and his lass were very popular. Addison, in The Guardian of 1713, gives snatches of a West Country ballad of this kind, and shows how vastly superior it is to the pastorals of Dresden china shepherds and shepherdesses of Pope and Philips.
[81.] The Duke's Hunt. Words and melody taken from James Olver, again at Stoke Gabriel, again at Mary Tavy, again at Menheniot. This is a mere cento from a long ballad, entitled "The Fox Chase," narrating a hunt by Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of Charles II. It is in the Roxburgh Collection, and was printed by W. Oury, circ. 1650. The ballad is there said to be sung "to an excellent tune, much in request." We suspect that the melody we give is the original tune handed down traditionally, and never before published. Mr. Sharp has noted down the same song and melody from a singer at East Harptree, Somerset.
[82.] The Bell Ringing. Words and air from William George Kerswell, Two Bridges, Dartmoor; sung also by James Down, blacksmith, Broadwood Widger. Broadbury Down is the highest ridge of land between Dartmoor and the Atlantic.
[83.] A Nutting we will go. Taken down from J. Gerrard, an old man, nearly blind, at Cullyhole, near Chagford, from Robert Hard, and again at Menheniot, and also from James Parsons. Bunting, in his "Irish Melodies," 1840, gives the same tune to a fragment of the same words, and says that he took it down in 1792 from Duncan, a harper. Duncan remembered a portion of a tune he had heard, perhaps, from English soldiers, and eked it out with some other tune. Then came S. Lover, and he took this air from Bunting, and wrote to it "The Lowbacked Car." But the original melody is found, not only in Devon and Cornwall, but also in the North, and Mr. Kidson gives it in his "Traditional Tunes," as "With Henry Hunt we'll go," a song sung in Manchester in connection with the arrest of Hunt in 1819. To the same air was set "The Plains of Waterloo." "The Lowbacked Car" has become popular through its words, and the inartistic quality of a patchwork tune has been forgiven for their sake.
The words "The Nutgirl" occur on Broadsides by Fortey, Such, etc. See Ballads collected by Crampton, B.M. (11,621, h), and (1875, b 19); but these are without the chorus. The printed Broadside has lost somewhat. For Gerard's—
"His voice rang out so clear and stout,
It made the horse-bells ring,"