She’s a lassie from Lancashire

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:

Florrie sings it: