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Peacock Followed the Hen

J. Collingwood Bruce, John Stokoe: Northumbrian Minstrelsy

J. Collingwood Bruce and John Stokoe printed the tune The Peacock Followed the Hen; or, Cuddle Me, Cuddy in their 1882 book Northumbrian Minstrelsy. They noted:

This tune has been claimed as Scottish, and has appeared in the collections of that country under the title of Brose and Butter, but in reality it is one of the old English bagpipe hornpipes of the kind so plentiful in the seventeenth century and in the former part of the eighteenth. The earliest copy of the tune we have been able to discover is in Playford’s Dancing Master, part II of the edition of 1698, where it appears under the name of Mad Moll; it is nearly identical with our pipe tune as above noted. A slightly different version of the tune was also known by the names of Yellow Stockings and The Virgin Queen—the latter title seeming to identify it with Queen Elizabeth, as the name of Mad Moll does with her sister Queen Mary, who was said to be subject to fits of mental aberration. The words of The Virgin Queen or of Mad Moll are not known to exist, but they probably consisted of some fulsome panegyric on Queen Elizabeth at the expense of her fortunate sister.

Allen Ramsey, in his Tea Table Miscellany, printed Dean Swift’s song of Oh! My Kitten, My Kitten! to the second version of this tune, and called it Yellow Stockings. This, so far as we have been able to trace, is the first appearance of the air in a Scottish publication. Upwards of half a century later it attained great popularity in that country under the name of Brose and Butter, as before mentioned.

The High Level Ranters played the tunes Shew’s the Way to Wallington / The Peacock Followed the Hen in 1968 on their Topic album Northumberland For Ever. Tom Gilfellon and A.L. Lloyd noted:

In his foreword to Bruce and Stokoe’s Northumbrian Minstrelsy, A.L. Lloyd points out that Northumbria possesses a style of tunes quite distinct from the melody-styles found elsewhere in Britain. We begin with a piece that shows this—a dance-tune distinctive not so much on account of its characteristic 9/8 time (common also to Irish slip-jigs) as for its engaging angularity arising from a remarkable profusion of augmented fourths. It seems pretty certain that the oddities of the typical Northumbrian airs rise mainly from the peculiarities of the local bagpipe or ‘smallpipes’. Shew’s the Way is a favourite small-pipes tune often connected with a miller named Anderson, who, on rent paying day, would take his pipes instead of money to the fair, where he would entertain his landlord so well that it’s said he never returned without a receipt marked paid in full in his pocket.

The Peacock Followed the Hen is again a reasonably old tune, a version having appeared in the 1698 edition of Playford’s Dancing Master under the title Mad Moll while a slightly different set was known by the names of Yellow Stockings and The Virgin Queen. About the turn of the nineteenth century it turns up as a very popular tune in Scotland under the title of Brose and Butter. Our set is from the Northumbrian Minstrelsy.

Canny Fettle played the tunes Shew’s the Way to Wallington / Andrew Carr / Long Room at Scarborough / Peacock Followed the Hen in 1975 on their Traditional Sound album Varry Canny.

Alistair Anderson, Anthony Robb and Colin Robb played the tunes All the Night I Lay With Jockey / The Peacock Followed the Hen in 1976 on the Northumberland small pipes album, Cut and Dry Dolly. Alistair Anderson also played Wedding o’ Blyth / The Peacock Followed the Hen / Drops of Brandy on the 2008 anthology of the history of the English concertina, English International.

Kathryn Tickell played the slip jig The Peacock Followed the Hen in 1984 on her first album, On Kielder Side, and in 1991 on her Black Crow album The Kathryn Tickell Band. She noted on the first album:

The Peacock Followed the Hen is an old Northumbrian tune. The slow variations come from John Peacock’s A Favourite Collection (of Tunes With Variations), Northumbrian Pipers Society reprint, 1980.

Dr Faustus played the tunes Dr Faustus / The Peacock Followed the Hen / The Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket in 2003 on their Fellside album The First Cut. They noted:

Dr Faustus comes from the Oxford Nursery Songbook, while The Peacock Followed the Hen and The Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket are from Northumberland and Dorset respectively, the latter from the Thomas Hardy manuscripts.

Oysterband played the tunes The Bishop of Chester’s Gig / The Peacock Followed the Hen on 12 December 2003 at The Forum, London. This concert’s recording was released in 2005 on their Westpark DVD The 25^th Anniversary Concert.

Broom Bezzums payed the tunes The Peacock Followed the Hen / Kiss Her Under the Coverlet / The Black and the Green in 2007 on their album Arise You Sons of Freedom….

Nancy Kerr performed Gan tae the Kye and Peacock Followed the Hen on Stick in the Wheel’s 2019 anthology From Here: English Folk Field Recordings Volume 2. She noted:

A medieval song. It is a tune and a song. I’ve always liked the way that you can take especially Northumbrian tunes and kind of intertwine them. It’s a tune called Peacock Followed the Hen which I’ve always thought of as Northumbrian. It’s in Playford as well, I think it’s called Mad Moll, some really ubiquitous sort of 9/8 slip jig. And Gan Tae the Kye, which is a piece of North-Eastern kind of Border poetry really. It’s in a book, Stokoe—Songs of the North Country. And yeah, they just seem like sisters so I kind of tied them together. Like Nancy Clough, I don’t remember not knowing Peacock Followed the Hen. And Gan Tae the Kye, often you hear the tune played but you don’t always hear it as a song. They’re so spooky, really a bit Other.

Frankie Archer sang Peacock Followed the Hen on her 2023 EP Never So Red. She noted:

Peacock Followed the Hen is an old Northumbrian Smallpipes tune and song. It has lyrics too which are cryptic in parts but quite clearly talk about lust and sex. “Aal the neet ower and ower” (all night over and over) “the peacock follows the hen”. So it’s a very one-sided thing where one person is chasing or pressuring another person for sex. Normally this is interpreted as a man chasing a woman for sex. I“wasn’t a big fan of this message so I added another verse, quite cryptic again but basically saying: stop the one-sided pursuit. That’s not cool. Step back and listen to what the other person wants, have respect. If it’s a two-way thing, if you listen to each other, then maybe both people can have more fun.

Lyrics

The Peacock Followed the Hen; or, Cuddle Me, Cuddy in Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882)

All the neet ower and ower,
All the neet ower agyen,
All the neet ower and ower,
The peacock followed the hen.

The cock he’s a dainty dish,
The hen’s all hollow within,
There’s ne deceit in a pudding,
And a pie’s a dainty thing.

Cuddle Me, Cuddy; or The Peacock Followed the Hen in Joseph Cawhall: A Beuk o’ Newcassel Songs (1888)

A’ the neet ower an’ ower,
An’ a’ the neet ower agyen –
A’ the neet ower an’ ower,
The peacock followed the hen.

A Hen’s a hungerie dish,
A geusse is hollow within;
There’s nee deceit iv a puddin’;
A pye’s a dainty thing.

Frankie Archer sings Peacock Followed the Hen

Aal the neet ower and ower,
And aal the neet ower again –
Aal the neet ower and ower,
The peacock follows the hen.

The cock is a dainty dish,
The hen is all hollow within;
There’s nee deceit in a puddin’;
A pie’s a dainty thing.

Tastier is the puddin that
Sits on the counter top;
Pastry is made by rubbing
The water in drop by drop.