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.
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.
A Folk Song a Week 