Eggs for your breakfast in the morning

AKA A country life
First Published 1878?
Writer/composer Harry Linn Roud RN1752

Music Hall Performers Harry Linn, JW Rowley, Edward Cunningham
Folk performances Source Singers
Walker, Mrs. no date Scotland
Randall, William 1905 England : Hampshire
Longino, Mrs. Grace 1939 USA : Texas
Dunn, George 1971 England : Staffordshire
Pardon, Walter 1978 England : Norfolk

Modern performances
The Watersons
Eliza Carthy
Many more..

 

From Harry Linn's Fireside Songbook (1880)
I love to roam through the bright green fields
I love to live on the farm.
I love to take a stroll where the primroses grow,
For a country life's a charm.
I love to wander through the old barn yard,
Round by the old hay stacks,
And listen to the cackle of the chickens and the chucks,
And the pretty little ducks quack quack,
 
Quack! Quack! Quack! go the pretty little ducks.
The hens chuck, chuck, gives you warning,
When the old cock crows, then everybody knows
There's an egg for your breakfast in the morning.

I love to gaze on the ripe yellow corn,
I love to roll in the grass.
I love to take a ramble through the new-mown hay
With a pretty little country lass.
I love to wander by the old mill stream
And catch every breeze that blows;
And see the lambs as they gambol in the fields
In the morning when the old cock crows.

I love my home on the little white farm,
Where the ivy entwines round the door.
I love to hear the lark when he soars on high
And listen to the old bull's roar.
I love to hear the milkmaid's song,
And the humming of the busy little bee.
Well you can have your cities and you can have your towns,
But a country life for me.

A song closely related to this one: A Country Life, was famously sung by Mike Waterson and The Watersons, that version has a different tune but overlaps in several verses – see Mainly Norfolk for more on this. The song sung in the Halls is much closer to the version remembered by Walter Pardon and the other source singers listed above.

Eggs for your breakfast was a huge hit in the late 1870s for our old friend JW “Over” Rowley. It was written by Harry Linn and also sung by Edward Cunningham. The first printed reference to it I can find is this advert from 1878:

The Era Oct 13 1878

There are also references to it later being sung at minstrel shows.

The sheet music was published in roughly 1878, I can’t find an exact date. It was clearly a big money spinner for the publishers and for Rowley, who published a proud announcement: “publicly thanking Mssrs Francis Brothers and Day, Music Publishers, for their very handsome present of a purse of gold for the successful rendering of “Eggs for your breakfast in the morning” (The Era, Jan 29, 1879).

Regular readers will be relieved to hear that Rowley did not limit his gamboling to his song about the Derby, as testified in this brief but telling review of a performance in 1879:

Mr JW Rowley sang “Eggs for your Breakfast,” danced, and turned over.

Review of benefit for Herbert Sprake, Collins’s, The Era Apr 6 1879

I like to imagine him gambolling alongside the lambs…

George Dunn’s version, as collected by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1971

Downloaded from the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library

Sources: