Harry the Tailor

(Traditional.)

[The following song was taken down some years ago from the recitation of a country curate, who said he had learned it from a very old inhabitant of Methley, near Pontefract, Yorkshire.  We have never seen it in print.]

When Harry the tailor was twenty years old,
He began for to look with courage so bold;
He told his old mother he was not in jest,
But he would have a wife as well as the rest.

Then Harry next morning, before it was day,
To the house of his fair maid took his way.
He found his dear Dolly a making of cheese,
Says he, ‘You must give me a buss, if you please!’

She up with the bowl, the butter-milk flew,
And Harry the tailor looked wonderful blue.
‘O, Dolly, my dear, what hast thou done?
From my back to my breeks has thy butter-milk run.’

She gave him a push, he stumbled and fell
Down from the dairy into the drawwell.
Then Harry, the ploughboy, ran amain,
And soon brought him up in the bucket again.

Then Harry went home like a drowned rat,
And told his old mother what he had been at.
With butter-milk, bowl, and a terrible fall,
O, if this be called love, may the devil take all!