| AKA |
| Lyrics | JB Geoghegan | Music | JB Geoghegan | Roud | RNV8317 |
| Music Hall performers | JB Geoghegan Sam Torr |
| Folk performances | Oldham Tinkers |
THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES.
Written and Composed by JB Geoghegan. Music Published by J Blockley, 3 Argyle Street Regent St, London
[From: A book of selected songs Written and Composed by Mr JB Geoghegan and sung with immense success by Mr Sam Torr]
In vain I attempt to describe
The charms of my favourite fair,
She's the darlin' of Mother Eve's tribe,
With her there is none to compare;
She's a mirror of beauty so bright.
Her image my fancy enriches.
My charmer's the village delight.
She's the pride of the Lancashire Witches.
And hurrah for the Lancashire Witches
Who's smile every bosom enriches,
Oh dearly I prize those pretty blue eyes
Of the pride of the Lancashire Witches
They may talk of the dark eyes of Spain,
Tis useless to boast as they do;
They attempt to compare them in vain
With the Lancashire ladies of blue.
Only view the dear heavenly belles
You are soon filled with love's sudden twitches,
Which nought could create but the spells,
From the eyes of the Lancashire Witches.
The Lancashire Witches, believe me,
Are beautiful every one;
But mine, or my fancy deceives me,
Is the prettiest under the sun.
If the wealth of the Indies, I swear,
Were mine and I wallow'd in riches,
How gladly my fortune I'd share
With the pride of the Lancashire Witches.
Formal dinners in Lancashire will often include a standing toast to “The Lancashire Witches”– a reference to the bewitching beauty of the women of that county. It ironically refers to the Pendle witch trials of 1612 which resulted in the execution of eight women and two men. From the late 18th century the Pendle Witch Trials and “The Lancashire Witches” became the subject of numerous stories, poems, songs, pantomimes and plays- for instance Charles Dibdin’s 1782 song from the pantomime of the same name, The Lancashire Witches (first line: Of familars you’ve heard, and hobgoblins and sprites) . Annoyingly, the existence of so many other works called The Lancashire Witches makes it exceptionally difficult to be certain when it this song was first sung and the best we can do is suggest that this song was probably written and first sung in the early 1860s.
The song appears on a huge number of undated broadsides, most of which do not refer to Geoghegan as author or performer. One such uncredited version was re-published in John Harland’s book of Lancashire ballads in 1865, with the statement that “We print this from a street ballad sheet”. So we can state with reasonable certainty that the song we credit to Geoghegan was circulating before 1865.
I have chosen to give the lyrics of Geoghegan’s song as printed from a small booklet held by Bolton Central Library : A book of selected songs Written and Composed by Mr JB Geoghegan and sung with immense success by Mr Sam Torr, Printer: T. Abbatt, Corporation St, Bolton (no date, prob c1876).
The printer of the booklet, T Abbatt, was a long-standing business in Bolton, and according to the hundreds of notices they placed in local newspapers (eg The Bolton Daily Chronicle and The Bolton Evening News) operated on Corporation Street between August 1871 and December 1895.
The better known songs in the booklet were published as sheet music in the mid- to late 1870s and its reasonable to suggest that this booklet was printed in around 1876, more than a decade after the “ballad broadsheet” was copied by John Harland.
The song seems to have been an exceptionally popular song in the north-west, some decades later even inspiring a Lancashire Witches perfume:
Geoghegan was a freemason, he wrote a parody of his own song called The Wife of an Accepted Mason for a collection of Masonic Songs published in Bury, Lancashire. The chorus was:
Then hurrah for the wife of a Mason!
Masonic Songs- Bury, p375
No trouble will e’er leave its trace on
The brow of the fair
Who her home has to share
With a free and an accepted Mason.
19th century broadsides exist in which the song has been adapted by changing the place name, so that the song becomes The Irish Witches – there are two examples in the Roud Indexes, for example one held at the Univ of Kentucky .
Here it is as sung by Daniel Kelly:
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%3AV8317
- Version, published by John Harland: Ballads & songs of Lancashire : chiefly older than the 19th century, John Harland (1865)
- Lyrics from: A book of selected songs Written and Composed by Mr JB Geoghegan and sung with immense success by Mr Sam Torr, Printer: T. Abbatt, Corporation St, Bolton, no date. [from Bolton Central Library]. These lyrics are very similar to those in Harland’s Lancashire Ballads (1865) available at Archive.org [its the version that was sung by The Oldham Tinkers.]
- Masonic Songs-Bury (1885) in Archive.com
- Bolton Chronicle – Saturday 10 December 1870
Last Updated on February 8, 2026 by John Baxter | Published: February 28, 2020
