They all have a mate but me
AKA | The fox and the hare |
Lyrics | JB Geoghegan | Music | JB Geoghegan | Roud | RN1140 |
Music Hall performers | Sam Torr 1870s, 1880s |
Folk performances | Source Singers C., S.E. 1922 USA : Massachusetts Livimore, Mrs. Abby Maria 1930 USA : Vermont Kennison, Josiah 1931 USA : Vermont Ring, Mr. 1942 England : Kent : Dornan, Angelo 1955 Canada : New Brunswick Sparkes, Emily 1958/1959 England : Suffolk Boyden, David 1964 England : Bedfordshire Green, Harry 1967 England : Essex Connell, John 1972 Ireland Addison, Mrs. 1976 England : Lincolnshire Brennan, Caroline 1978 Canada : Newfoundland Goodman, May Terry nd USA : Virginia Cowan, Beryl nd England : Essex |
Kind Christians all, on you I call, If to pity you feel inclined You're care bestow on a fellow full of woe, Who is almost off his mind Six wives I've wed, but they've all gone dead, My love was labour in vain For I've married and I've buried, till I'm very nearly worried And I'm sick with women on the brain. There's the fox and the hare And the badger and the bear And the birds on the Greenwood tree And the pretty little rabbits So engaging in their habits And they've all got a mate but me. The first on the page is little Sally Sage, She once was a lady's maid But she ran away on a very dark day, With a fellow in the fried fish trade The next was a cook, oh a beauty with a hook, And I'll tell you the reason why For a leg she had a stump, on her back was a hump And she'd got a little squint in her eye. Another one to charm was a girl on a farm, Well versed in harrows and ploughs She guarded the rigs of a lot of little pigs And squeezed new milk from the cows She was sixteen stone, all muscle and bone And she looked with a awful leer And she would have been mine but fell in a decline Through swallowing mouse in her beer. Then another one came, oh a right jolly dame And her purse was as long as my arm All full of yellow gold, such a sight to behold Would the heart of a miser warm And her only sin was a love of gin And it brought our hopes to a wreck For she slipped with her heel on a bit of orange-peel Fell down and broke her blessed neck I could add to the score full half a dozen more For the list is a long way round One went o'er the sea for a better chap than me And some of them were hanged or drowned And the last I had through drink went mad In vain I tried to stop her And sad was my dismay to discover that She'd been boiled to death in a copper.
A song collected from folk source singers on both sides of the Atlantic, and found in a number of broadsides and songbooks. As a folksong its more often referred to as The Fox and The Hare,
It was originally sung in the halls by Sam Torr, written by our old friend JB Geoghegan. The British library catalogue has They all have a mate but me (song begins: “kind Christians all”) written by Joseph Geoghegan, published London 1876.
Sam Torr (1849-1923) was a successful music hall comedian in the style of a lion comique. He started singing in the “Free and Easies” as a teenager and was later famous for a song called “On the back of daddy O” in which he would appear to be riding on the back of a life-sized dummy. For a while he turned to managing in the halls, and famously worked with Joseph Merrick “the elephant man”. He returned to performing in the early 20th century, but also managed the Malt Cross in Nottingham.
Sources:
- Lyrics from monologues.co.uk
- VWML records
- Emily Sparks sings a fragment, collected by Desmond and Shelagh Herring.
- British Library catalogue entry.
The Fox and The Hare performed by Jimmy Crowley and Stokers Lodge.