Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"Low Down in the Broom" is another song from Joe Offer's collection of songs mostly taken from the BBC radio programme "Singing Together".
It often makes me wonder would this type of song be suitable for young children?
According to the footnote in the collection:
Source: Purslow, F, (1968), The Wanton Seed, EDFS, London
Notes:
Frank Purslow's notes follow:
Gardiner H460/H 948. The tune from George Smith of Fareham; the text from James Channon of Ellisfield near Basingstoke, augmented with Smith's and from a broadside, publisher unknown. A widely-known song, hardly ever printed since the broadside versions, It could be assumed from the rhyming of "die" and "be" or "me" that it has a Scottish origin. The late Frank Kidson, however, was of the opinion that My Daddy is a Canker't Carle, to the air of which Burns wrote My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, was apparently a version of an English song of the Low Down in the Broom variety - see the last verse but one. In England, however, the song is sung to a number of different tunes which suggests that here, at any rate, it never had a tune of its own, broadside texts - which seem to be the origin of English versions - being sung to any tune that happened to fit the metre; this particular one being fairly obviously an adaption of a dance tune. As there seems to be no English ballad sheet earlier than the very end of the 18th century the inference would rather seem to be that, if the Scottish song is indeed a relative of this English one, the the Scottish one is the original.
"Low Down in the Broom" is another song from Joe Offer's collection of songs mostly taken from the BBC radio programme "Singing Together".
It often makes me wonder would this type of song be suitable for young children?
According to the footnote in the collection:
Source: Purslow, F, (1968), The Wanton Seed, EDFS, London
Notes:
Frank Purslow's notes follow:
Gardiner H460/H 948. The tune from George Smith of Fareham; the text from James Channon of Ellisfield near Basingstoke, augmented with Smith's and from a broadside, publisher unknown. A widely-known song, hardly ever printed since the broadside versions, It could be assumed from the rhyming of "die" and "be" or "me" that it has a Scottish origin. The late Frank Kidson, however, was of the opinion that My Daddy is a Canker't Carle, to the air of which Burns wrote My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, was apparently a version of an English song of the Low Down in the Broom variety - see the last verse but one. In England, however, the song is sung to a number of different tunes which suggests that here, at any rate, it never had a tune of its own, broadside texts - which seem to be the origin of English versions - being sung to any tune that happened to fit the metre; this particular one being fairly obviously an adaption of a dance tune. As there seems to be no English ballad sheet earlier than the very end of the 18th century the inference would rather seem to be that, if the Scottish song is indeed a relative of this English one, the the Scottish one is the original.
