Week 312 – I am a donkey driver

I got ‘I Am a Donkey Driver’ from the singing of Sussex singer Harry Upton, on the 1976 Topic album Green Grow the Laurels: Country Singers From the South. Although, like several other songs on this blog, it’s likely that I first heard it sung by my friend Adrian Russell.

It’s not a song I’d ever consciously set out to learn, but then a few weeks ago, while out for a gentle stroll with my mother-in-law in the New Forest, we came across half a dozen donkeys, and this song immediately popped into my head. Finding that I seemed to know, or at least half know, quite a lot of the words, I thought I might as well learn the rest.

So here it is. Where my half-remembered words seemed to flow more easily than what Harry Upton actually sang, I haven’t made too much effort to change things; it’s supposed to be an oral tradition after all.

Besides Mike Yates’ recording of Harry Upton, there are several other sightings of the song in oral tradition – mostly in Southern England, but the song also appears to have been known by schoolchildren in County Westmeath, Ireland, and I’ve discovered this morning that the song even turned up in Sint Eustatius in the Netherlands Antilles – check out this charming recording of Alice Gibbs, made by Alan Lomax in 1967.

The song appeared on broadsides – there’s an example on the Bodleian website, and ‘Jerusalem Cuckoo’ is listed as Axon Ballads number 79 on the Chetham’s Library website, although at the moment none of the images from that collection seems to be visible.

The notes to the Musical Traditions release Why Can’t it Always be Saturday? state that the song was associated with Scottish music hall performer Harry Linn:

This song, which gets its name from Cockney rhyming slang – Jerusalem artichoke – moke (another word for a donkey), was printed sometime around 1870 by the broadside printer T Pearson of 4 and 6, Chadderton Street, Oldham Road, Manchester. According to the sheet the song was sung by the Scottish Music Hall performer Harry Linn, who also wrote songs – such  as Eggs for Your Breakfast in the Morning, which Walter Pardon used to sing, Jim the Carter’s Lad, a song often found in the repertoire of country singers, and, using the pseudonym Alexander Crawford, The Stoutest Man in the Forty-Twa.

Linn also wrote ‘The Birds upon the trees’, and I imagine there’s a pretty good likelihood that he composed this one too.

I am a donkey driver

 

My Mum riding a seaside donkey, Hastings 1930s; my Grandad Bert Elkins in close attendance. As far as I know, this donkey didn’t turn her the wrong way up.

Week 159 – Canadee-i-o

Those of you who sometimes find life imitating High Fidelity may have been asked to list your top five opening tracks on albums. My list would certainly include ‘I saw her standing there’ and ‘Country Home’ (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory). Perhaps ‘The Kesh Jig’ etc. (The Bothy Band, The Bothy Band) and ‘Shirley’ (Billy Bragg, Talking with the Taxman about Poetry). And definitely ‘Canadee-i-o’, the opening track on Nic Jones’ timeless classic Penguin Eggs. I first heard Nic play the song at a concert in Hertford College, Oxford in early 1980. Penguin Eggs was released later that year and of course I, like many others, played it over and over.

It was probably just a little bit later than that when I acquired a copy of the Topic LP Sussex Harvest, on which the opening track, funnily enough, is ‘Canadee-i-o’ – sung by Harry Upton from Balcombe, West Sussex, recorded by Mike Yates. I fairly soon decided to learn Harry Upton’s version, although it was probably some years later before I ever sung it in public – I always felt that the song wanted an accompaniment, but it took me a long time to work one out. In fact the accompaniment I play now has had several iterations over the years. I remember that I was always vaguely dissatisfied with it, but having recently come back to the song for the first time in about five years I’m much happier with it. So either I’ve got better at playing it, or I’ve improved it somehow, or my quality threshold has gone down.

On the excellent BBC Four documentary  The Enigma of Nic Jones – Return of Britain’s Lost Folk Hero there were several sequences where Harry Upton’s ‘Canadee-i-o’ could be heard, behind film of the old blue-label Topic LP being played. I’m not sure if this was meant to suggest that Nic Jones learned the song from a recording of Harry Upton. If so, it’s further evidence, if any were needed, of Nic’s wonderful creative ability, as his wonderful rendition bears only a passing resemblance to the song as recorded from Harry Upton.

Mike Yates’s 1970s recording of Harry Upton singing ‘Canadee-i-o’ can now be found on the Musical Traditions CD Up in the North and Down in the South. Mike’s notes tell us that Harry, a retired cowman, had learned ‘Canadee-i-o’ from his father, a Downsland shepherd. Apparently he and his father would sometimes sing together in harmony. It is also interesting to note that “like the Copper Family, Harry had many of his songs in manuscript form, often in his father’s handwriting, and had owned a collection of broadsides, mainly printed in the 1880s by the daughter of Henry Parker Such, of the Borough in south London.  Bought originally in Brighton, these had also been inherited from his parents”.

The Roud Index shows that this song was popular on broadsides, and has been collected throughout the British Isles. Had I not already had a version of the song in my repertoire I might well have been tempted to learn the version collected by Francis Collinson from Mr Newport of Boughton Aluph,  a village just outside my home town of Ashford in Kent. Perhaps some seafaring, folksong-singing Kentish resident who follows this blog might like to give it a go? If it helps, there’s a transcription of the tune and words on Folkopedia.

 

The lady’s trip to Kennady, 19th century broadside ballad from the Bodleian Collection.

 

Canadee-i-o

Andy Turner: vocal, C?G anglo-concertina

Week 86 – The Life of a Man

I learned this song from the Sussex Singer Harry Upton, via the limited edition 1978 Topic LP Why Can’t It Always Be Saturday?

Harry’s tune was somewhat different to that usually sung on the folk scene and, inadvertently, I seem to have bent it a bit further. Consequently, having started to sing this at folk clubs in the early nineties, I soon gave up – when it got to the chorus everyone seemed to weigh in with the tune or harmony they knew, and it tended to clash rather horribly with what I was singing. After that I didn’t sing the song at all for many years, but revived it one year ago, to perform in very particular circumstances. Several readers of this blog will know what those circumstances were, and will understand when I say that I have never derived less enjoyment from singing a song.

The Life of a Man