Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Another song from Joe Offer's collection, this one has the following information with it:
Source: John Stokoe, 1899, Songs and Ballads of Northern England, Walter Scott Ltd, London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Notes:
John Stokoe wrote, in 1899:
From William Topliff's Melodies of the Tyne and Wear, published over fifty years ago. This song, or one nearly identical, was also formerly common to the mummers in the north of Yorkshire at Christmas time. The person who sung the song was masked as an old horse, and at the end of every verse the jaws were snapped in chorus.
Found as a song all over England, due in part to its wide publication on broadsides; though the Old Horse himself is not recorded outside a fairly restricted band from North Yorkshire down into Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and across through Lancashire and Cheshire into Wales. A text (C19th) and tune (C20th) from the Sheffield area -where the practice continued into the 1970s- can be seen at the South Riding Folk Network website, together with links to associated material, including broadside examples:
I've been asked what "And at some lownd dike back my weary bowk may lie" means.
A 'dike' in this context is a ditch, and the construct 'dike back' would mean, roughly, an out-of-the-way ditch. That much I am confident of from my own time in the North-East. For the rest, I am guided by the Oxford English Dictionary. "Lownd" means 'calm' and 'bowk' is a Northern form of 'bulk', which would itself just mean 'body' here, I suppose.
I uploaded another variant with this title fourteen years ago:
youtu.be/OpZoEV6i9Q0?si=SmZXzHVld5ssKADv
Another song from Joe Offer's collection, this one has the following information with it:
Source: John Stokoe, 1899, Songs and Ballads of Northern England, Walter Scott Ltd, London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Notes:
John Stokoe wrote, in 1899:
From William Topliff's Melodies of the Tyne and Wear, published over fifty years ago. This song, or one nearly identical, was also formerly common to the mummers in the north of Yorkshire at Christmas time. The person who sung the song was masked as an old horse, and at the end of every verse the jaws were snapped in chorus.
Found as a song all over England, due in part to its wide publication on broadsides; though the Old Horse himself is not recorded outside a fairly restricted band from North Yorkshire down into Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and across through Lancashire and Cheshire into Wales. A text (C19th) and tune (C20th) from the Sheffield area -where the practice continued into the 1970s- can be seen at the South Riding Folk Network website, together with links to associated material, including broadside examples:
I've been asked what "And at some lownd dike back my weary bowk may lie" means.
A 'dike' in this context is a ditch, and the construct 'dike back' would mean, roughly, an out-of-the-way ditch. That much I am confident of from my own time in the North-East. For the rest, I am guided by the Oxford English Dictionary. "Lownd" means 'calm' and 'bowk' is a Northern form of 'bulk', which would itself just mean 'body' here, I suppose.
I uploaded another variant with this title fourteen years ago:
youtu.be/OpZoEV6i9Q0?si=SmZXzHVld5ssKADv
