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Song, Folk Music and Folk Customs
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Harrogate in Music & Song
This CD has ** tracks including Trip to Harrogate
If you may want to hear more, contact ......
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Yorkshire tunes
Four tunes from Harrogate
Ray Black shares with us a few tunes that originate from Yorkshire.
Large music notation (pdf): Yorkshire Morris Dance & Acomb Lodge
Large music notation (pdf): Harrogate Lodge, Trip to Harrogate, Trip to Oatelands
The Yorkshire Morris Dance
is an example of a Morris tune in a minor key, something that was once common but sadly not so much so these days. It appears to have acquired its rather intriguing sub-title by being used for a song which was published in Punch magazine, 6th August, 1892. Find out more about the song The Cycling Dustman.
Acomb Lodge
can be found in the East Yorkshire Manuscript where its source is referred to as Kilvington. This refers to T. Kilvington of York, an early 19th Century dancing master, who published it in 1822 in a book called Twelve Country Dances.
Harrogate Lodge
is from Hodsall’s Country Dances for 1810. and the same tune appears in a Scottish book from 1870 under the title of: The Merry Girls of York.
Trip to Harrogate
is from the Joshua Jackson Manuscript book. This is a family tune book started in 1798 by Joshua Jackson, a local miller and fiddler. The book passed down through successive generations of musical sons who added tunes from their own repertoires. The family eventually settled in Harrogate, where they and the original manuscript book are still to be found.
Trip to the Oatelands
is also from Joshua Jackson. This is also known as Oateland House, named after one of the first private houses in Harrogate. It was built on The Stray around 1800 by Captain Thackeray, a relative of William Makepiece Thackeray and is now part of St. Aidan’s school.
Recording from the CD
Trip to Harrogate played by Ray Black and friends (3mins 54secs)
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The Cycle-riding Dustman
A very New Song to a very Old Tune: ‘The Literary Dustman.’
v1
BUMBLE will ope his eyes, egad,
In hutter consternation.
He'd think as soon of a park-prad
For covies in my station.
Our Board o' Works knows wot is wot,
And has a feller-feeling.
About the parish must I trot?
No, hang it! I'll go Wheeling!
chorus
Out o' the road! The highway clear!
OSMOND's the Cyclist's fust man;
And I, by co-in-side-ance clear,
Am the fust Cycling Dustman!
The happy foreman Dustman!
The Cycle-riding Dustman!
Yes, by a co-in-side-ance queer,
I'm the fust Cycling Dustman!
v2
Old fogies to the papers write,
Grumbling about their dust, Sirs.
They says we're scarce and imperlite,
Unless we're well tipped fust, Sirs.
When I wheels round on my machine,
Like ZIMMERMAN on hisn,
If we don't keep their dustbins clean,
Wy, pop me into prison!
v3
Their refuse-pails we'll promptly clear,
When on the wheels I'm fust man;
And even sour old maids shall cheer
The Cycle-riding Dustman!
Cycles for Dust-hos! Arter that,
It's Hosborne to my hattic
That Dusty BOB of the flap 'at
Will turn haristocratic.
v4
BUMBLE, old buck, I cannot tell
'Ow bloomin' proud I feel, man,
Old Shanks's mare I once knew well,
But now I'm turned swell Wheelman.
Good Greenwich Board o' Works! Hurroo!
Elated? Ain't I just, man!
Show the Big D! 'Twill bring to you
The Cycle-riding Dustman!
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A resolution on the Agenda of the Greenwich Board of Works runs as follows:
‘that in order to enable the foreman of the dustmen in the Parish of St. Paul, Deptford, to get about that parish with more expedition, and so superintend the work of the men under his control to greater advantage than is now possible, a tricycle be obtained for his use, at a cost not exceeding £21 1s. 6d.' Daily Chronicle.