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Eggs for Your Breakfast / The Pretty Little Duck / Country Life

[ Roud 1752 ; Master title: Eggs for Your Breakfast ; G/D 8:1667 ; Ballad Index Grd81667 ; Mudcat 120708 ; trad. / Harry Linn]

Walter Pardon sang A Country Life at home in a recording made by Mike Yates on 2 August 1978. It was published in 1982 as the title track of his Topic LP A Country Life and in 2000 on his Musical Traditions anthology Put a Bit of Powder on It, Father. The song was written and published by music hall singer Harry Linn in c.1878 and is quite different from the Watersons’s song which rather commemorates the passing of the seasons. But both songs have some common elements: They share some phrases, and Pardon’s verses are similarly built to the Watersons’ chorus. Mike Yates noted on the first album:

A Country Life, or Eggs for Your Breakfast in the Morning to use its alternative title, was written by the Victorian music hall singer Harry Linn, who, together with J.W. Rowley and E. Cummingham, made it into something of a hit in the 1870s. The words appeared in several song books of the period, including March’s Music Club, printed by Richard March & Co., London, and Pearson’s New Series Song Book, number 85, printed by Thomas Pearson of Manchester. Copies of these publications—which each contain about fifty songs and were monthly issued for 1d—survive in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in London.

George Dunn sang Eggs for Breakfast in a recording made by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1971. It was included in 2002 on his Musical Traditions anthology Chainmaker. The album’s booklet commented:

A song written by Harry Linn in the 1870s and, aside from George, only Walter Pardon is known to have sung it in the oral traditions, as A Country Life.

Lyrics

Walter Pardon sings A Country Life

I love to roam through the bright green fields,
I love to live on the farm.
I love to take a stroll where the primroses grow,
For the country life’s a charm.
I love to wander through the old farm yard,
Round by the old stacks,
And listen to the cackle of the chickens and the chucks,
While the pretty little ducks quack quack,

Chorus (repeated after each verse):
Quack, quack, quack, go the pretty little ducks.
The hens chuck, chuck, gives you warning.
When the old cock crows then everybody knows
There’s an egg for your breakfast in the morning.

I love to gaze on the ripe yellow corn,
I love to roll in the grass.
I love to take a ramble through the new-mown hay
With a pretty little country lass.
I love to wander by the old mill stream
And catch every breeze that blows;
And see the lambs as they gamble in the fields
In the morning when the old cock crows.

I love to live on the little white farm,
With ivy twining round the door.
I love to hear the lark when it soars on high
And listen to the old bull’s roar.
I love to hear the milkmaid’s song,
The humming of the busy little bee.
You can have your cities, you can have your towns,
But a country life for me.