Opening lines of a Tinker's song in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), quoted, with the air, in Chappell's National English Airs, No. 166. No. 167 is another Tinker's song, "There was a Jovial Tinker," from the same source. The notes on these songs are interesting: see also that on the Carman's Whistle, No. 231.
I have two Shropshire songs with the refrains—
"Ri fol i diddle i gee wo!"
and
"Tal lal la ra li gee wo!"
These may be called the ploughman's refrains, but the words have nothing to do with agriculture.
A Shropshire Hunting Song (a doggerel account of a run, 1790-1800) has the refrain—
"Tally-ho, tally-ho, hi, tally-ho!
Hark forward, hark forward, huzza, tally-ho!
Lancashire Milking Song.
"Cush-a cow bonny, come let down your milk,
And I will give you a gown of silk,
A gown of silk and a silver tee.
If you will let down your milk for me."
This had degenerated into a nursery rhyme as early as 1825-1830, at Bury, in Lancashire.
Tee=a cow-tie.
Cush-cow (pronounced cuosh (glossic), the uo like oo in wood) means a hornless cow in some parts of North Shropshire. In the Swaledale dialect, cush is a call-word to cows. In Icelandic, kussa is a cow; kus, a call-word to cows.—See Jackson, Shropshire Word-Book, p. 110, s. v. Cush-cow.
Stang Riding, with Rhyme.
"They have a custom in Cheshire, which I well remember witnessing in the parish of Northen,[1] when I was a little boy. A Mrs. Evans,
- ↑ Northenden, in Cheshire (near Manchester), commonly called Northen.
