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Nothing Else to Do

[ Roud 1265 ; Ballad Index WT143 ; Bodleian Roud 1265 ; Wiltshire 175 ; trad.]

Frank Hinchliffe sang Nothing Else to Do in 1976 at his home near Sheffield, Yorkshire, to Mike Yates. This track was included in the following year on his Topic album of traditional songs from South Yorkshire, In Sheffield Park, and in 2002 on the Musical Traditions anthology of songs and music from the Mike Yates Collection, Up in the North and Down in the South. Mike Yates commented in the latter album’s accompanying booklet:

A song which has rarely been recorded, with only ten Roud entries. Alfred Williams collected a song with the same title from Alfred Spiers of Southrop, but this set has little in common with Frank’s gentle text. Ian Russell collected it in 1977 from Frank’s cousin, Grace Walton, also in Sheffield. Henry Parker Such issued a broadside version entitled A Courting I Went; I Had Naught Else to Do, and Pitts and Russell (of Birmingham) had similar songs. Frank’s tune, especially towards the end, seems similar to that used for the song The Female Drummer and for the American hymn Bringing in the Sheaves.

Spriguns sang Nothing Else to Do on their 1976 Decca album Revel Weird and Wild.

Will Noble sang Nothing Else to Do on his 2017 Veteran CD It’s Gritstone for Me. Brian Peters and John Howson commented in the album’s liner notes:

A nineteenth-century broadside, collected in oral tradition from many Southern English counties as well as from Yorkshire. Again, Will got it from the singing of Frank Hinchliffe, and enjoys it for the farming connotations as well as the humour.

Alison Frosdick sang Nothing Else to Do on Amsher’s 2018 album of Hampshire songs collected by Lucy Broadwood in Oxfordshire, Patience Vaisey at Adwell 1892. Bob Askew noted:

A humorous song from a man’s point of view about courting, and marrying, when he had ‘nothing else to do’! It seems to have been very popular in the past. Seven other noted versions suggest that it was still moderately popular around 1900.

Lyrics

Frank Hinchliffe sings Nothing Else to Do

Now the summer is o’er and the harvest is past,
We’ve gathered all the corn and we’ve gathered all the grass.
There’s a neat little cottage that stands full in view,
And I go there a-courting when I’ve nothing else to do.
Nothing else to do, nothing else to do,
And I go there a-courting when I’ve nothing else to do.

I go there a-courting, then what harm in that?
We spend all our time in sweet harmony and chat.
She told me that she loved me and I knew she did so too,
And I told her I would marry her when we’d nothing else to do.
Nothing else to do, nothing else to do,
And I told her I would marry her when we’d nothing else to do.

And now we are married to both our hearts content,
We must not quarrel and we must not lament.
But live together so happy like others ought to do,
And enjoy all our pleasures when we’ve nothing else to do.
Nothing else to do, nothing else to do,
And enjoy all our pleasures when we’ve nothing else to do.