83. A NUTTING WE WILL GO. Taken down from J. Gerrard, an old man, nearly blind, at Cullyhole, near Chagford, from Robert Hard, and again at Menheniot, and also from James Parsons. Bunting, in his "Irish Melodies," 1840, gives the same tune to a fragment of the same words, and says that he took it down in 1792 from Duncan, a harper. Duncan remembered a portion of a tune he had heard, perhaps, from English soldiers, and eked it out with some other tune. Then came S. Lover, and he took this air from Bunting, and wrote to it "The Lowbacked Car." But the original melody is found, not only in Devon and Cornwall, but also in the North, and Mr. Kidson gives it in his "Traditional Tunes," as "With Henry Hunt we'll go," a song sung in Manchester in connection with the arrest of Hunt in 1819. To the same air was set "The Plains of Waterloo." "The Lowbacked Car" has become popular through its words, and the inartistic quality of a patchwork tune has been forgiven for their sake. The words "The Nutgirl" occur on Broadsides by Fortey, Such, etc. See Ballads collected by Crampton, B.M. (11,621, h), and (1875, b 19); but these are without the chorus. The printed Broadside has lost somewhat. For Gerard's-- "His voice rang out so clear and stout, It made the horse-bells ring," it gives-- "His voice was so melodious, It made the valleys ring." The Broadside ballad consists of fourteen verses, and is very gross. I have had to considerably tone down the words. An earlier Broadside by Pitts has the chorus. The same air was employed for the ballads, "In January last, on Monday at Morn," for "The Brags of Washington," 1775, for "Calder Fair," and "To Rodney we will go." It is given in the third edition of "Scotch, Irish, and Foreign Airs," Glasgow, 1788. A version is in _Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 127, as taken down in Sussex. This version begins-- "And as this brisk young farmer was ploughing up his land, He called to his horses and bade them gently stand. He sat himself down a song to begin, His voice was so melodious, made the valleys to ring. And as this brisk young damsel was nutting in the wood, His voice was so melodious, it charmed her as she stood; She had no longer power in that lonely wood to stay, And what few nuts she'd got, poor girl, she threw them all away." 84. DOWN BY A RIVER SIDE. Taken down from the singing of James Townsend, Holne. He had learned it from his grandfather, who had been parish clerk of Holne for fifty years and died in 1883, over eighty years old. A version, recovered in Surrey, is given in the _Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 204.