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The Haying Cock

[ Roud 9318 ; trad.]

Bob Copper sang The Haying Cock in a recording made by Peter Kennedy on 2 February 1955 (BBC 21545). I don’t know anything about this song except for its first line,

One morning, oh so early, on the feast of Valentine

and Peter Kennedy’s comment:

Like Ophelia Song in Hamlet (Act IV Scene 5) this concerns the popular belief that a man was supposed to marry the first girl he saw on St Valentine’s Day.