The Nutting Girl, performed by Cyril Poacher before The Barley Mow (on the same track) sung by Jack French

Recorded on “The Barley Mow” Songs from the Village Inn collected by Peter Kennedy, HMV E.M.I. 7EG 8288 Side 2, Track part 1.

Total Duration 7 min. 34 sec.

Recorded under the auspices of the EFDSS.

The Nutting Girl.  With the exception of Baring-Gould, who collected The Nutting Girl probably in the 1880’s, (under the title A-hunting we will go), (q.v. Baring-Gould & Hitchcock 1974, pp. 12-13) this song has mostly been collected during the twentieth century, generally in the South of England and East Anglia, from Devonshire to Suffolk. The melody has been popular for a long time — probably for considerably longer than the words. Variously it has been used for English Country Dances and Morris Dances, and the tune has also been used for songs from Lancashire and Yorkshire, Mowing Match Ballad (or Song) given in Palmer 1979, pp. 200 to 203, and Howgill Lads, respectively. Both are cited by Kennedy, p. 435. In the mid-nineteenth century the Irish song writer, librettist, and Music Hall performer Samuel Lover (1797—1868) used the melody for his very popular song, The Low-Backed Car, (see Healy, Ballads from the Pubs of Ireland, Vol. 1, pp. 63-64) about Peggy, a pretty farm girl, driving her horse and trap to market. Roy Palmer, in his notes to the song, (1979, pp. 132-133) observes that hunting for nuts—mostly hazelnuts and beechnuts, when I was growing up in Devonshire—was generally done in September, at about the same time ploughing began in the fall. He also notes an old country saying, that a good season for nuts meant a good season for babies the following year!

Ballantyne 1994, p. 47.

1. Now, come all you jovial fellows, come listen to my song,
It is a little ditty and it won’t contain you long,
It’s of a fair young damsel, she lived down in Kent,
Arose one summer’s morning and she a-nutting went.

ref:
With my fal-lal, to me ral-tal-lal, Whack fol-the-dear all day,
And what few nuts that poor girl had, She threw them all away.
With my fal-lal, to me ral-tal-lal, Whack fol-the-dear all day,
And what few nuts that poor girl had, She threw them all away.

2. It’s of a brisk young farmer, was ploughing of his land,
He called unto his horses to bid them gently stand,
As he sat down upon his plough all for a song to sing,
His voice was so melodious it made the valleys ring.

3. Now, ’tis of this fair young damsel she was nutting in the wood,
His voice was so melodious it charmed her as she stood,
[In that lonely wood] she could no longer stay,
And what few nuts she had, poor girl, she threw them all away.

She then came to young Johnny, as he sit on his plough,
4. She said, “Young man I really feel cannot tell you how,”
He took her to some shady broom and there he laid her down,
Says she, “Young man I think I feel the world go round and round.”

5. Now, come all you young women, this warning by me take,
If you should a-nutting go, please get home in time,
For if you should stay too late to hear that ploughboy sing,
You might have a young farmer to nurse up in the spring.

Both this song and the next were recorded at “The Ship”, Blaxhall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. Cyril Poacher’s version of The Nutting Girl is introduced by the Chairman, “Wickets” Richardson. Kennedy gives the song on pp. 416-417 with notes on pp. 434-435. This version of The Nutting Girl is the original for the version I sing and which I learnt from the singing of John and Sue Kirkpatrick in the 1970s. [Mike Ballantyne]

REFERENCE:
BALLANTYNE, Robert Michael.
1994    Pint Pot & Plough, Thirty-One English Traditional Folksongs. Cobble Hill: Barley Wine Music.