Harvest Home, The

Oh, come let us see how your liquors be 
Fill up your glass and drink to each lass
And gently jog her on your knee
Twill make her the kinder grow

For we are the lads with a hey-down-derry
Drinking ale as brown as a berry, 
And the good strong beer will drown dull care, 
And welcome the harvest home, Harvest home
And welcome the harvest home

Now Jack and Sue came tumbling in
With the big Brown jug, so neat and trim.
And now John Barleycorn is in,
Why let us be merry, merry be.

Now Jack and Sue proposed a dance, 
It was agreed upon by chance, 
That they should have it on the grass, 
And the fiddler should play them a tune.
Then every lad took forth his lass,
And gently led her on the grass,
While around went his tail, 
Like a wind mill sail
To welcome the harvest home

Now before the last dance was done, 
Thou art out" says Dick "Thou art a liar" says John
"The fiddler played it wrong" says Tom 
"So we'll have it over again"
Then every lad took forth his lass,
And gently led her on the grass,
While around went his tail,
Like a wind mill sail
To welcome the harvest home

There are many, many songs about harvest home. This one may have been written in the early 19th century before the Halls began, or it is just about possible that it was written by/for Harry Fox who was certainly performing it around 1860 when the Diprose Song book was 1st published. However, it’s also possible that Fox had been singing it much longer as his career started in 1840 or before.

A potentially earlier version appears on a broadsheet with an estimated publication date between 1819 and 1844 (Bod12041, Roud V16286), it has slight differences to the “Diprose” version but is essentially the same song.

That said it is very possible that it is a much older song, so on balance this is probably worth classifying as a song that existed before the Halls :one of the folksongs sung in the early Music Hall. It was collected by many of the well-known late 19th-century and early 20th century collectors: Cecil Sharpe, Lucy Broadwood, George Gardiner, and Alfred Williams. As far as I can see they took it at face value as a folksong from the oral tradition.

We do know that it was sung in the early music halls by Harry Fox (1817-1876), known as The Warbling Waggoner. Fox was one of the Society of Singers described in Charles Rice’s diary of 1840. Rice describes a group of professional and semiprofessional singers who sang in the singing rooms of taverns, and the very early music halls. Fox went on to be an agent and to chair proceedings at a number of venues including The Casino in Manchester. In 1852 he took up the positions of chair at the famous Middlesex Music Hall, Drury Lane, London – a position which he held very successfully until his death in 1876.

Sources:

• VWML entry
• Kilgarrif Sing Us
• Rice Tavern Singing
• History of Middlesex Music Hall in Arthur Lloyd site
• The Era Almanack 1868-1873 unpaginated a2
• The Era 1850-1876 various…
• A copy of Gardiners notation on Noteflight

Last Updated on October 22, 2020 by John Baxter | Published: July 16, 2020