Polly Perkins of Paddington Green

AKA (Sweet) Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
The brokenhearted milkman
I’m a hard-working milkman
First published 1863
Lyrics Harry Clifton Music Harry Clifton/Trad Roud RN430

Music Hall performers Harry Clifton
Folk performances Source Singers
Mrs Duncan, no date, Scotland
Mrs Dickie, no date, Scotland
Mrs Bowker, 1909, Lancashire, England
Mrs HW Adams, 1931, Virginia, USA
Horatio Luce, 1931, Vermont, USA
William McIlwaine, 1932, Virginia, USA
Elizabeth Ashton Garrett Purcell, 1934, Virginia, USA
John Green, 1937/38, Tristan da Cunha
Mrs Maud McShann Wasson, 1939, Mississippi, USA
Mrs Gladys Ainsworth, 1941, Vermont, USA
Jonathan Moses, 1943, New Hampshire, USA
Mabel White Lansing, 1944, Massachusetts, USA
SA Hopkins, 1953, Nova Scotia, Canada
Mrs Henneberry, 1953, Nova Scotia, Canada
Alice Mary Bond, 1953/54, Cambridgeshire, England
Virginia Wood, 1975, Missouri, USA
Tom Murphy, 1976, Newfoundland, Canada
Bride Judge, 1978, Newfoundland, Canada
Mabs Hall, 1980, Sussex, England		 

I'm a broken hearted milkman in grief I'm arrayed
Through keeping the company of a young servant maid
Who lived on board and wages the house to keep clean
In a gentleman's family, in Paddington Green.

For she was as beautiful as a butterfly and proud as a queen
Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.

When I'd rattle in the morning and cry “Milk below”
At the sound of my milk cans her face she did show
With a smile upon her countenance and a laugh in her eye
If I'd thought that she loved me I'd have laid down to die.

Her eyes were as black as the pips of a pear
No rose in the garden her cheeks could compare.
Her hair hung in ringlets so beautiful and long
I thought that she loved me but found I was wrong.

When I asked her to marry me she said “Oh what stuff”
And told me to drop it, for she'd had quite enough
Of my nonsense. At the same time I'd been very kind
But to marry a milkman she didn't feel inclined.

“The man that has me must have silver and gold
A chariot to ride in and be handsome and bold
His hair must be curly as any watch spring
And his whiskers as big as a brush for clothing.

The words that she uttered went straight through my heart
I sobbed and I sighed and I straight did depart
With a tear on my eyelid as big as a bean
I bid farewell to Polly and Paddington Green.

In six months she married, that hardhearted girl
But it was not a mi-lord and it was not an Earl
It was not a baronet but a shade or two wuss
It was a bow-legged conductor of a twopenny bus.

Harry Clifton, star of the early Music Halls, was a hugely successful singer-songwriter, and perhaps this is his best remembered song.

Polly P is widely recognised as a Music Hall song and it appears in numerous broadsides, printed collections and in the singing of many traditional singers on both sides of the Atlantic, there are over 90 entries in the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library.

The British library catalogue suggests that Polly Perkins was first published in 1865 (though some sources give 1863) with words and music both credited to Clifton, though he does seem to have a habit of adopting traditional tunes and claiming them for his own. Kilgarriff argues that the music was based on the traditional tune The Nightingales Sing.

Tony Pastor, the great American vaudeville/music hall entertainer sang the song as Polly Perkins of Washington Square, and George Ridley famously sang and wrote the parody Cushie Butterfield. Having said that, there are a wide range of other parodies including One of the Has-beens, a song about a folksong!

Sources: