1988: Christmas Mumming in a North Cotswold Town. Appendix H: Analogues to the Campden Mummers' Song

Craig Fees, “Christmas Mumming in a North Cotswold Town: With Special Reference to Tourism, Urbanisation and Immigration-Related Social Change“, PhD., Institute of Dialect and Folklife Studies, School of English, University of Leeds, England (1988). 


The song sung by the Campden mummers as James Madison Carpenter transcribed it, (Carpenter Collection, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London) sheet 1218, runs as follows:


Me father died the other night
An left me all his ritches.
An old tomcat an a paper rat
An a pair o leather britches,


An it's I look here, an I look there,
An I look over yonder.
An there you’ll see the old grey goose
A smilin at the gander.


House an land is in my command
An there's dobbin in the stable
Three old chairs painted red
An a rare old kitchen table.

 


Compare other versions in H.J. Massingham's Wold Without End, Cobden-Sanderson, London, 1932, p. 25; Christopher Whitfield’s "The Christmas Mummers", (see Appendix G); Peter Harrop's The Performance of English Folk Plays: A Study in Dramatic Form and Social Function, PhD. dissertation,  University of Leeds, 1980, p. 213.


In Mrs. Gutch and Mabel Peacock's Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning Lincolnshire, County Folklore Vol. V, David Nutt, London, 1908, p. 393. under "Jingles and riddles", there are two similar verses:


My father died when I was young,
     And left me all his riches;
His gun and volunteering cap.
     Long sword and leather breeches.