it gives—
"His voice was so melodious,
It made the valleys ring."
The Broadside ballad consists of fourteen verses, and is very gross. I have had to considerably tone down the words.
An earlier Broadside by Pitts has the chorus.
The same air was employed for the ballads, "In January last, on Monday at Morn," for "The Brags of Washington," 1775, for "Calder Fair," and "To Rodney we will go." It is given in the third edition of "Scotch, Irish, and Foreign Airs," Glasgow, 1788.
A version is in Folk-Song Journal, vol. i. p. 127, as taken down in Sussex. This version begins—
"And as this brisk young farmer was ploughing up his land,
He called to his horses and bade them gently stand.
He sat himself down a song to begin,
His voice was so melodious, made the valleys to ring.
And as this brisk young damsel was nutting in the wood,
His voice was so melodious, it charmed her as she stood;
She had no longer power in that lonely wood to stay,
And what few nuts she'd got, poor girl, she threw them all away."
[84.] Down by a River Side. Taken down from the singing of James Townsend, Holne. He had learned it from his grandfather, who had been parish clerk of Holne for fifty years and died in 1883, over eighty years old. A version, recovered in Surrey, is given in the Folk-Song Journal, vol. i. p. 204.
[85.] The Barley Rakings. Taken down from Roger Hannaford, Lower Widdecombe, Dartmoor. The words exist in Broadside versions by Such, Bingham of Lincoln, Robertson of Wigton, etc. Such's version consists of six verses, the others of four. Hannaford's verses 2 and 3 were unlike those of Bingham and Robertson, but resembled 3 and 4 of Such. He had not 2 and 6 of Such. He had a curious line in verse 2: "They had a mind to style and play" (the Anglo-Saxon styllan, to leap or dance), not found in the printed copies. As none of these versions would be tolerable to polite ears, Mr. Sheppard has modified the words considerably. The melody to which "Barley Rakings" is sung in other parts of England is wholly different. Ours is probably an early dance tune, originally in the Mixolydian Mode, which has undergone modification in oral transmission.
[86.] A Ship came Sailing over the Sea. This curious song was obtained by the late Rev. S.M. Walker of Saint Enoder, Cornwall, from a very old man in his parish, and it was sent me by Miss Octavia L. Hoare. We heard the same from old Sally Satterley at Huckaby Bridge, Dartmoor. She was the daughter of an old crippled singing man on the moor. I have told the story of the way in which she as a young bride with her husband took possession of a house built all in one day, in my Dartmoor Idylls, "Jolly Lane Cott." Sally is now dead, and her house has been rebuilt and vulgarised. One verse, running—