Gentle Annie

Words: Unknown
Tune: Stephen Foster



The harvest time's come, gentle Annie,
And your wild oats are all scattered round the field.
You'll be anxious to know, gentle Annie,
How your little crop of oats is going to yield.

CHORUS:
We'll say farewell, gentle Annie,
For you know with you I can no longer stay.
Yes, I'll bid you adieu, gentle Annie,
Till we meet you on another threshing day.

Your mutton's very sweet, gentle Annie,
And I'm sure it can't be packed in New South Wales,
But you'd better put a fence around the cabbage,
Or they'll all get eaten up by the snails.


You'll take my advice, gentle Annie,
And you'd better watch your chappie goin' away
With his packbag flung over his shoulder,
And he stole some knives and forks the other day.


Written by the prolific Stephen Foster in 1856, this parody seems to have developed in Australia. Wikipedia has the following note:

An alternative version from Australia is also known as Gentle Annie. This was published in Australian Tradition, Vol. 1, no. e, in 1964. It was recorded by Martyn Wyndham-Read.[3] The tune is the same as the Stephen Foster version, but the lyrics are different. The Australian lyrics were written by Lame Jack Cousens of Springhurst, Victoria. Sources state that its subject is Annie Waits. The song "Gentle Annie" sung by Tommy Makem is a different song from both the Foster and the Australian version.

Any clarification of the origins of this one would be gratefully received. (There's a brief mudcat discussion here)

Sailor Home From The Sea

Words: Dorothy Hewett
Music: Martyn Wyndham-Read



Oh Cock of the North with a dream in his hand
My love has come home to this beautiful land
He bursts through the door with his eyes like the sun
And his kitbag crammed full of the treasures he's won

A coral from Broome and a tall Darwin tale
A pearl and a clam and the jaws of a whale
My kitchen is filled with the smell of the sea
And the leaping green fishes my love brings to me

Oh tumble your treasures from Darwin and Broome
And fill with their glory this straight little room
With the sun of the morning ablaze on his chest
My love has come home from the north of north-west

And deep in our bed we'll lie and we'll be
We'll kiss and we'll listen to the rain on the sea
Warm as the summer, we've lived winter long
My love has come home like King Solomon's song


From Martyn Wyndham-Read's 1973 LP, Harry The Hawker is Dead..


These notes from the folkcatalogue blog:

The poem, by Australian communist poetess Dorothy Hewett, was published in 1963, MW-R wrote the tune “back in about 1964” and played it to audiences in Britain on his return in 1967.

Some time after it morphed into a song called Cock of the North, a staple in the repertoire of Finbar and Eddie Furey. MW-R explains the, erm, folk process:

“I well remember singing my tune to Sailor Home From The Sea into Eddie Furey’s tape recorder circa late 1960′s and then in the early ’70′s being on tour in Germany and staying at Willy Schwenken’s house,” he recalled. “Willy made records of the vinyl variety and also had an extensive collection. While browsing through some of these I saw that there was a recording of the Furey’s live concert at some hall.

“One of the tracks was I think Cock of The North. So, being curious, I played that track, sure enough it was Sailor Home From The Sea having been, as Bob Bolton so accurately describes as ‘being painted green’, something about having learnt the song from their grandmother and it was all about gun running, to be honest I am not too sure about this bit being on the actual record but I am sure that I have heard them introduce it this way.

“One thing I am sure of is that each time I have seen Eddie and asked him about this he has always had a pressing engagement in a different direction.”

The Flash Stockman

Traditional



I'm a stockman to me trade and I call me Ugly Dave,
I'm old and grey and only got one eye.
In the yard I'm good, of course, but just put me on a horse
I'll go where lots of young 'uns daren't try.

I've lead 'em through the gidgee over country rough and ridgy,
I'll loose them in the very worst of scrub.
I can ride both rough and easy, with a brumby I'm a daisy,
And a rightdown bobby-dazzler in a pub.

Just watch me use the whip, I can give the dawdlers gyp,
I can make the flamin' echoes roar and ring.
With a branding-iron, well, I'm a perfect flamin' swell,
In fact I'm duke of every blasted thing.

To watch me skin a sheep, it's so perfect you could weep,
I can act the silvertail as if my blood was blue.
You could strike me pink or dead, if I stood upon me head,
I'd be just as good as any other two.

I've a notion in me pate that it's luck, it isn't fate,
That I'm so far above the common run.
So, for ev'rything I do, you could cut me square in two
For I'm much two flamin' good to be in one.


Closely related to The Woolloomooloo Lair, The Flash Stockman was published in 1895 in the Queenslander. These lyrics are the Martin Wyndham-Read version.

The Maid of Australia

More a song about an imagined Australia than a true song of this land, but I thought I'd stretch the theme today. (It's also unlikely that the relationship unfolded in this way outside the imagination of the author).

Trad.





As I walked down by the Oxborough Banks
Where the maids of Australia do play their wild pranks,
By a shady green bower I sat myself down,
Where the birds sang so gaily, enchanting all round
In the forest of native Australia,
In the forest of native Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

Oh I had not been long at that beautiful scene
Where the fields are delightful, the trees evergreen,
When a lovely young damsel to me did appear.
From the banks of the river she quickly drew near,
She's a native of happy Australia,
She's a native of happy Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

She tore off her clothes and before me she stood
As naked as Venus just come from the flood.
She looked me in the face and smiling said she,
“This is the robe that nature gave me
On the day I was born in Australia,
On the day I was born in Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.”

She leapt in the water without fear or dread,
Her beautiful limbs she quickly outspread,
Her hair hung in ringlets, her colour was black,
“Kind sir, you can see how I swim on my back
In the stream of my native Australia,
In the stream of my native Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.”

Being tired of swimming she came to the bank,
“Assistance, kind sir, or I surely shall sink.”
Like lightning I flew, took her out by the hand,
My footing I lost and we fell on the sand.
She took me to the bush of Australia,
She took me to the bush of Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.

Oh we sported together in the highest of glee,
In the fairest Australia you ever did see.
My hair to her beautiful breast was inclined
Till the sun in the west all its glories resigned
To this beautiful maid of Australia,
To this beautiful maid of Australia,
Where the maidens are handsome and gay.


These notes from Mainly Norfolk:

[Roud 1872 ; trad.]

Harry Cox sang The Maid of Australia on the anthology Songs of Seduction (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 2; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1968), and in another recording by Leslie Shephard in Catfield, Norfolk, on October 9, 1965. That one was included in 1996 on the Topic anthology Hidden English: A Celebration of English Traditional Music, and in 2000 on his Topic CD box, The Bonny Labouring Boy. Steve Roud commented in the latter's sleeve notes:

This song of male wish-fulfilment has only rarely been reported in Britain—perpaps its risque subject-matter kept it out of collector's notebooks, but it is pretty mild by modern standards. The fact that all three known English versions are from East Anglian singers—Walter Pardon and Sam Larner being the other two—is most probably a coincidence. It is reported only once from Canada, but several times in the USA (see Guy Logsdon, The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing, 1989).

Peter Bellamy recorded The Maid of Australia during the sessions for his 1979 Topic LP, Both Sides Then, but it was left out and didn't find its way onto it before the CD reissue in 1992. The recording was included, however, on his 1983 cassette Fair Annie: English, Irish, Australian and American Traditional Songs, on the 1986 Fellside anthology Flash Company, and in 1999 on Free Reed's Peter Bellamy anthology, Wake the Vaulted Echoes.

Martin Carthy sang The Maid of Australia on Brass Monkey's fifth album Flame of Fire; this track was reissued on the anthology Evolving Tradition 4. He commented in the former record's sleeve notes:

I think of Maid of Australia as a sweet piece of Pre-Raphaelite fantasy and I think that it's true to say that it has only ever been found in Norfolk. What's sung here is a mixture of versions of Harry Cox and Walter Pardon, and according to the latter, the song was forbidden in certain pubs. The late and much lamented Peter Bellamy was the first person I heard actually singing it so there is a very large dollop of him to be found here. And thank him very much.


Mainly Norfolk also gives three alternative lyrics. I have chosen the Martin Carthy lyrics to my own arrangement.