Digital Tradition Mirror

Cushie Butterfield

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Cushie Butterfield
(George Ridley 1834-1864)

I's a broken-hearted keelman and I's over head in love
With a young lass in Gateshead and I call her my dove.
Her name's Cushie Butterfield and she sells yellow clay,
And her cousin is a muckman and they call him Tom Grey.

cho: She's a big lass and a bonny lass and she likes her beer
     And they call her Cushie Butterfield and I wish she was here.

Her eyes is like two holes in a blanket burnt through
Her brows in a morning would spyen a young cow
And when t' hear her shouting Will you buy any clay?
Like a candyman's trumpet it steals my heart away

You'll oft see her down at Sandgate when the fresh herring come
She's like a bag full of sawdust tied round with a string
She wears big galoshes too and her stockings once was white
And her petticoat's lilac and her hat's never straight

When I axed her to marry me she started to laugh
Now none of your monkey tricks for I like ne such chaff
Then she started a blubbing and she roared like a bull
And the chaps on the quay says I's nought but a fool

She says the chap that gets her must work every day
And when he comes home at nights he must gang and seek clay
And when he's away seeking she'll make balls and sing
O well may the keel row that my laddie's in.

*spyen - to dry up a cow's milk
A parody of a music hall hit.
See also Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!