{"id":12142,"date":"2021-08-17T11:29:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T11:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/folksongandmusichall.com\/?page_id=12142"},"modified":"2025-12-23T08:16:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:16:24","slug":"popsy-wopsy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/folksongandmusichall.com\/index.php\/popsy-wopsy\/","title":{"rendered":"Popsy Wopsy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
AKA<\/strong><\/td>He’s gone to be a Mormon<\/td><\/tr>
First Published<\/td>1868<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Writer\/composer<\/td>Charles Merion<\/td>Roud<\/strong><\/td>RN24467<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Music Hall Performers<\/strong><\/td>Annie Adams<\/td><\/tr>
Folk performances<\/strong><\/td>Submitted as words to an \u201cold song\u201d for Sprite\u2019s Article<\/em>, Eastern Evening News (4 Sep 1929), Norfolk England
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From the Manchester Central Library broadside collection\n\nPopsy Wopsy.<\/strong>\nor \"He's Gone to be a Mormon!\"\nSung by Miss Annie Adams\n\nOh! I'm a helpless female, an unprotected female.\nMy husband's been and gone, and run away from me, my heart to wring,\nHe's gone to join the Mormons, those gay and festive Mormons, \nAnd while he's getting married there, I\u2018m left alone to sing.\n \nOh! my Popsy Wopsy\u2018s vanished from my sight,\nAnd we might have been so happy, so we might;\nBut now he\u2018s gone away to be a Mormonite!\nAnd now no doubt he has about a dozen wives or more.<\/em> \n\nHe had a winning manner, a most engaging manner,\nAnd when we wed I never thought he'd come to go and serve me so;\nBut he was so deceitful, the men are all deceitful!\nAnd bring poor girls, like me to grief, and that's as well to know. \n\nBut I mean to go and join him, go on the sly and join him,\nJust drop upon him unawares and put a stop to all his fun,\nAs soon as I can reach him, this fact I mean to teach him,\nTho' he may have a dozen wives, still I am NUMBER ONE.\n\nYoung ladies, take a warning, let my fate be a warning,\nThat men are all a kind of sort of Blue Beard, and will not be true.\nBut if they will neglect us to lose they can\u2019t expect us,\nFor what is sauce for GOOSE, you know, is sauce for GANDER, too.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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“Popsy Wopsy<\/em>” seems to have been a common form of comic endearment theatres and Music Halls in the late 19th and early 20th century. Ella Retford had a major hit with a different song called Popsy Wopsy<\/em> in 1913. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the late 1860s and 1870s, there were a number of popular songs drawing humour from the polygamous practices of the Mormons, perhaps most famously James Hillier’s  Brigham Young<\/a>. In 1866 a song called  My wife has joined the Mormons <\/em>was published, after apparently being sung on stage by George Leybourne. It is tempting to think that this song is a riposte to Leybourne’s.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This version of Popsy Wopsy<\/em> was extremely popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In the USA the song was famously sung by Annie Alexander, and American sheet music is available credited to Annie Alexander\/Paul Rutter.  A slightly different version was also published in the USA , Popsy Wopsy: I’m a Lone Grass Widow <\/em>credited to Harry Miller , it included a dance. It is very common in this period to see music written for the British Halls attributed to other writers in the USA. Songs could cross the Atlantic in both directions at that time, but on balance I think it’s most likely that this song was first written and performed in Britain<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
The Era<\/em> has Annie Adams singing it in London in April 1868 (April 26 1868) and later that year reviewed the newly published sheet music, both more than a year before the earliest reference I can find to the song being performed in America in late 1869 when it was published in Henry de Marsan Singers Journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Sept. 6, 1868; The Era <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
British sources credit Charles Merion as the writer composer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recording or download of this song can be purchased from Windyridge CDs.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n