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From the North

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 132219 ; Cicely Fox Smith]

Gary and Vera Aspey sang From the North in 1975 as the title track of their first Topic album, From the North. They noted:

A hare-hunting song, taken from a collection of Lancashire Hunting Songs by Cicely Fox Smith, 1909. The tune was added by ourselves.

Danny Spooner sang From the North on his 2011 CD The Fox, The Hare and the Poacher’s Fate.

Barbara and Peter Snape sang From the North on the 2015 anthology Celebrating Cicely and on their 2016 album Upward Onward. She noted:

From the North is a poem by Cicely Fox Smith, published in 1909 in a book called Lancashire Hunting Songs, and Other Moorland Lays. The tune was written by Gary and Vera Aspey, also from Lancashire. ‘Jannock’ is the term for an all-round good egg. In June 2014 we were asked to participate in the Celebrating Cicely project which had been set up to commemorate her as a poet, author and traveller, in the village of Bow in mid-Devon where she spent her last years and is buried.

We included this song as part of our set at that concert and it has remained a favourite ever since.

Lyrics

Cicely Fox Smith’s poem From the North

I wish’t I was in Lancashire huntin’ o’ the hare
All across the wide moorlands an’ the hollows brown an’ bare,
Hearkenin’ to the good hounds’ cry, hearkenin’ to the horn,
Far away in Lancashire on a windy morn.

I wish’t I was in Lancashire along o’ folks I know,
Rangin’ o’er the countryside in all the winds that blow
As they blew when I was yet a lad, in the place where I was born,
Far away in Lancashire on a good huntin’ morn.

There’s gradely hounds in Lancashire, as such there always were:
There’s gradely hills in Lancashire as how they’re bleak an’ bare:
There’s jannock lads in Lancashire, and that I tell you true,
An’ I wish’t I was in Lancashire all the day through!