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Cottage Well Thatched With Straw

[ Roud 1270 ; VWML SBG/1/1/184 , SBG/2/2/78 ; Wiltshire 568 ; trad.]

Sabine Baring-Gould: Songs of the West Alfred Williams: Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames

Tom and Barbara Brown sang A Cottage Well Thatched With Straw in 2002 on their WildGoose album Prevailing Winds. Tom Brown noted:

I first heard this song from Mrs. Foxworthy, a magnificent statuesque white-haired Cornish woman—and Tony Foxworthy’s mother. It’s a classic song for modernists to mock at—as a rose-tinted view of bygone country life. I think of it as a statement about a set of values that, thankfully, is not yet dead—at least in those parts of the country that still have ‘community’ rather than ‘residents’. The outbreaks of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001 even went some way to reinforcing such attitudes in some places. I eventually learnt the song from a recording of Mrs. Foxworthy that Moe & Em Keast made decades ago—although I admit to slight tampering with the third verse. Baring-Gould also published a version in Songs of the West, as did Alfred Williams in Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames.

Jim Causley sang The Cottage Well Thatched With Straw on his 2021 album Devonia. He noted:

Traditional. Baring-Gould Collection.
Collected from John Watts, quarryman, Alder, Thrushleton.

Dave Lowry sang Cottage Well Thatched With Straw on his 2024 WildGoose album Songs of a Devon Man. Bill Crawford noted:

Collected by Sabine Baring-Gould from John Watts, of Alder, Thrushleton [VWML SBG/1/1/184, SBG/2/2/78] . There are variants as far away as Worcestershire. This version benefits from being in 9/8 rather than the more usual 6/8 time. We also know that this version was sung on Exmoor by Margaret Palmer’s grandfather. It’s found in Songs of the West. Gill Lowry learnt it at school.

Lyrics

Dave Lowry sings Cottage Well Thatched With Straw

In the days of yore, there sat at his door,
An old farmer and thus sang he,
“With my pipe and my glass, I wish every class
On the earth were as well as me!”
For he envied not any man his lot,
The richest, the proudest, he saw,
For he had home-brew’d brown bread,
And a cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And a cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And a cottage well thatch’d with straw;
For he had home-brew’d, brown bread,
And a cottage well thatch’d with straw.

“My dear old dad this snug cottage had,
And he got it, I’ll tell you how.
He won it, I wot, with the best coin got,
That’s the sweat of an honest brow.
Then says my old dad, You be careful lad
To keep out of the lawyer’s claw.
And you’ll have home-brew’d brown bread,
And your cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And your cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And your cottage well thatch’d with straw;
Then you’ll have home-brew’d brown bread,
And your cottage well thatch’d with straw.

“Now the rich and the poor from my door I don’t turn,
But I give them a crust of brown;
And a drop of good ale, my boys, without fail,
For to wash the brown crust down.
Though rich I may be, it may chance to me,
That bad luck should spoil my store,
Then I’d lack home-brew’d brown bread,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw;
Then I’d lack home-brew’d brown bread,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw.

“Then in frost and in snow to the Church I go,
No matter the weather how.
And the service and prayer that I put up there,
Is to Him who speeds the plough.
Sunday saints, i’ feck, they cheat all the week,
With a ranting and canting jaw,
Not for them is my home-brew’d, brown bread,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw.
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw,
Not for them is my home-brew’d, brown bread,
And my cottage well thatch’d with straw.”