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One Man Shall Mow My Meadow

[ Roud 143 ; Master title: One Man Shall Mow My Meadow ; Ballad Index ShH100 ; Wiltshire 633 , 1070 , 1089 ; DT ONEMANMW ; Mudcat 66923 ; trad.]

Maud Karpeles: The Crystal Spring Roy Palmer: Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams Frank Purslow: Marrow Bones Frank Purslow: The Foggy Dew James Reeves: The Everlasting Circle Cecil J. Sharp: One Hundred English Folksongs Ken Stubbs: The Life of a Man Alfred Williams: Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames

George Townshend sang Mowing Down the Meadow to Brian Matthews in between 1960 and 1964. This recording was included in 2000 on his Musical Traditions anthology Come, Hand to Me the Glass. Rod Stradling noted:

A widely-known ‘counting song’ in southern England—it has been collected 26 times, with only a couple of examples from outside that area (Canada and Australia). The majority are from further west—Dorset, Somerset and Devon—George’s is the only one from Sussex. Unsurprisingly, there are no Broadside versions listed.

Having sung the entire last verse (despite his daughter’s protestations), from one hundred down to zero in one breath, George has enough left (at the age of 78), to call to Brian Matthews “See if you can do that!”

Isla Cameron sang One Man Shall Mow My Meadow in 1962 on her Prestige International album The Best of Isla Cameron. Ewan Maccoll noted:

Like the Barley Mow song, this was once a favorite chorus at ‘harvest homes’ and other farm feasts. Alfred Williams, author of Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames, states that it was sometimes kept going until a hundred men had worked the meadow. This version was collected by Cecil Sharp in Somerset.

Lyrics

George Townshend sings Mowing Down the Meadow

There’s one good man, there’s two good men, a-mowing down my meadow.
There’s three good men, there’s four good men, a-getting my hay together.
Me four, me three, and me two, and me one, and they all work well,
Cutting my hay and carrying it away, and they are jolly good fellows.

… and so on, by ones to twenty, and then by tens to a hundred.