| AKA | Lassie from Lancashire |
| First published | 1907 |
| Lyrics | Murphy, Dan Lipton & Neath | Music | Murphy, Lipton & Neath | Roud | RN24008 |
| Music Hall performers | Florrie Forde Ella Retford |
| Folk performances | Source singers Messenger, Alice 1975-80, England: Suffolk |
From a dear little Lancashire town a boy had sailed away Across the briny spray, to toil in USA When American girls gathered round and sought his company He'd say, 'There's only one girl for me.' She's a Lassie from Lancashire Just a Lassie from Lancashire She's the Lassie that I love dear Oh so dear! Though she dresses in clogs and shawl She's the prettiest of them all None could be fairer, or rarer than Sarah My Lass from Lancashire. Night and day, of his lassie he'd dream, recalling her sweet smell He'd hear the factory bell, the sound he knew so well Home from work he would walk once again, and though in reverie He'd say, 'There's only one girl for me.' Day by day he kept plodding away and to his task he stuck And by a stroke of luck, a paying vein he struck When he wrote to tell that he'd shortly cross the sea He'd say, 'There's only one girl for me.'
Florrie Forde (1876-1940, Australian)and Ella Retford (1886-1962, Irish) were both well-known for singing this lovelorn Lancastrian ballad :-). Touching on themes of homesickness and emigration as so many songs from the Halls do.
CW Murphy ((1875-1913) wrote many songs for Florrie Forde, often working with lyricist Worton David. Here he was working with another of his regular collaborators, Dan Lipton (1873-1935) and also John Neat (1876-1949) who was more often credited as a musical arranger, rather than lyricist or composer . Murphy produced a number of hits for Florrie Forde including: Oh! Oh! Antonio, Has anybody here seen Kelly? and Flanagan. Florrie was a fixture in the Halls on the the Isle of Man, where many a Lancastrian would be taking their holidays..
The song has been recorded from one source singer in the late 1970s, but it seems to be most likely that it would be then as now regarded as a “classic music hall song”.
Sources:
- VWML entry
- Lyrics and sheet music: monologues.co.uk
- Kilgarriff: Sing Us
- Baker: British Music Hall
Florrie sings it:
Last Updated on October 27, 2020 by John Baxter | Published: August 12, 2020
