> Mike Waterson > Songs > The Wensleydale Lad
The Wensleydale Lad / The Fine Old Yorkshire Gentleman
[ Roud 21176 ; Master title: The Wensleydale Lad ; TYG 8 ; trad.]
Bill Price sang The Fine Old Yorkshire Gentleman in 1972 as the title track of his Folk-Heritage album The Fine Old Yorkshire Gentleman. His sleeve notes commented:
The Fine Old Yorkshire Gentleman (or The Wensleydale Lad) turns up in many forms in different parts of the county. This version was collected in Horton-in-Ribblesdale in 1960, verse 2 and 5 being added from Holroyd's Yorkshire Ballads (1892). It tells the story of a country lad's first visit to town, and how his native wit triumphs over the city dwellers sophistication.
Mike Waterson sang The Wensleydale Lad accompanied on chorus by his sisters Lal and Norma, his niece Maria and Jim Eldon in 1977 on his LP Mike Waterson. It was also added to the Watersons' Green Fields CD reissue. A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:
This is one of the three hundred-odd Yorkshire songs collected mostly in the 1850s and 1860s by Abraham Holroyd, an ex-weaver, ex-soldier turned printer in a Bradford back street. It appears in Holroyd's Collection of Yorkshire Ballads, published posthumously in 1892. It is sometimes called Leeds Church. Mike got this piece from Paul Graney, who has supplied good northern songs to a lot of singers.
Lyrics
Mike Waterson sings The Wensleydale Lad | Notes by Greer Gilman |
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Wey, what wi' me father and mother at home |
|
Why, in Leeds I've heard it were comin on |
A lovely place, Wensleydale, but very far from the bright lights. |
Chorus (after every other verse): | |
Well, first thing I seen was a factory |
Factories are still a wonder, not yet seen as a threat. At least not to a farm lad; skilled weavers felt otherwise. The great frame-breaking in the North and Midlands, the Luddite rebellion, was 1811-1816. “The cropper lads in the county o' York / Have broken shears at Foster's Mill” (there's a cracking version of this on Swan Arcade's Nothing Blue album). Another more poignant song about these times is The Handweaver and the Factory Maid (on Brass Monkey's See How it Runs) |
Why, and Owd Ned, he turned every wheel |
Owd Ned = the weaving engine |
Wey, next I went to Leeds owd church |
owd = old |
There was thirty forty people in tubs |
tek off thi hat = take off thy hat; |
Then in there come this great Lord Mayor |
The great Lord Mayor is a bishop with his crook; the white sack-poke (flour sack) is his surplice. Tub is a contemptuous or jocular word for a pulpit, and not only in Yorkshire; a tub-thumper is a ranting preacher. Here, the topmost tub is one of those crow's nest pulpits, up a winding stair. (There's a fine one in Whitby.) A Jack-in-the-pulpit sort of pulpit. |
And then in there come this t'other chap |
T'other chap is the deacon, and his mockery is his part in the liturgy, reading the responses. |
Well, then there began this clatterin row |
|
He was tellin us rich folks went to heaven |
thowt to mesen = thought to myself These two verses aren't in the printed text--too bolshy? The lad may be green, but he's shrewd. |
Wey, then they began to preach and pray |
George our King would be George III (ruled 1760-1820) or George IV (1820-1830), at the latest. |
Well, some they sang very well |
An early experiment with sampling? Ambient hymn-singing? A lovely sly comment on the psalmody of the day. |
When the preachin and prayin was over |
|
Why nowt, says he, me lad |
nowt = nothing |
Acknowledgements
Transcribed from the singing of Mike Waterson by Greer Gilman. Thanks for this and her extensive notes.