That’s where my love lies dreaming

First Published1897

Writer/composerAlbert Hall / Orlando PowellRoudRN32466

Music Hall PerformersPat Rafferty
Folk performancesCollected from the singing of:Keeping Family ; England : Lambeth ; 1930s-50s
Where does my love lie dreaming,
Dreaming the hours away?
So sang a sweetheart tender
At the close of a June-tide day;
He was a gallant sailor
Out on the ocean blue
She knows she can trust her darling
She knows that he's ever true.
And she sings in the moonlight gleaming,
"Oh, Where does my love lie dreaming?"

Why fast asleep and snoring, far across the sea,
With his proper missus is her sailor free,
Fourteen little dirty kids you plainly see,
And in the bedroom screaming
If she only saw him, oh! there would be strife
He who swore to love her all the blessed life
Dossing with his fourteen kids and lawful wife
That's where her love lies dreaming.


"Where does my love lie dreaming,
Dreaming the hours away?"
So sang an aged mother,
Of her athlete son so gay ;
He was a champion boxer,
Who never had made a slip,
Now he has gone off to fight for
The ten stone championship.
And she sings in the moonlight gleaming,
"Where does my love lie dreaming?"

Why lying at the bottom of the ring all right,
Half his jaw is fractured and his nose is quite,
"Who the devil kidded you that you could fight?"
His backers all are screaming;
He had only fought a round and then felt queer,

Both his eyes are blackened too, I greatly fear,
With half his blessed "boko" slung behind his ear,
That's where her love lies dreaming.


"Where does my love lie dreaming,
Dreaming the hours away?"
So sang a sweet young wifie,
Of husband old and grey;
He had gone up to London,
Business had called he said,
So now she's softly wondering,
Where he has laid his head.
And she sings in the moonlight gleaming,
"Where does my love lie dreaming?"

Why absolutely speechless up in London town,
Beer by the bucketful he's poured down, down,
Lying in the gutter and without a brown,
His face with four ale beaming.
Outside by the potman he has just been hurled,
Little kids are shouting, "Get your whiskers curled!"
Lying in the gutter and blind to the world,
That's where her love lies dreaming.


"Where does my love lie dreaming,
Dreaming the hours away?"
So sang a city merchant,
Of his wife, who was young and gay.
She had gone down to Brighton,
Spending a holiday,
So her adoring husband,
Thinks of his darling May.
And he sings, though with business teeming,
"Where does my love lie dreaming?"

Why, sitting with a Johnny on the Brighton sands,
On her hubby's money, there they do the grand,
As he gives a gentle squeeze unto her hand,
The moonlight softly gleaming.
As her face she buries in his Sunday vest,
All she wants is to be kissed and then caressed,
With her big fat head reposing on that young man's chest,
That's where his love lies dreaming.


[*boko = large nose]

Stephen Foster wrote Come where my love lies dreaming in 1855 and the song was popular well into the 20th century. Albert Hall and Orlando Powell wrote this parody, performed by Pat Rafferty, in the late 1890s. Rafferty apparently won “a reception worthy of a prime minister” for his rendition at the South London Music Hall in 1897.

Sources:

  • Entries in the Roud Indexes at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library: https://archives.vwml.org/search/all:single[folksong-broadside-books]/0_50/all/score_desc/extended-roudNo_tr%3A32466
  • Kilgarrif Sing Us
  • Lyrics and Sheet Music: Powell, O., Rafferty, P., Hall, A., & Banks, H. G. (1897). That’s where my love lies dreaming. Francis, Day & Hunter. [Bodleian Mediated Copying]
  • Stephen Foster US Sheet Music: Library of Congress
  • Stephen Foster lyrics: Traditional Music Library
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