1
Willy went ti Westerdale,
Aye do a dandy,
Willy went ti Westerdale,
Clish, clash, mi clandy,
Willy went ti Westerdale,
’E married a wife an browt ’er ’eame, (home)
Sing a-ler-o, tak ’er amang yer.
2
’E bowt ’er twenty good milk kye, (cows)
She let nineteen o’ them go dry.
3
She only milked ’er once a year,
An’ that was ti mak butter dear.
4
When she kenned she kenned in ’er beeats, (churned in her boots)
Ti mak a print she put in ’er feeat. (foot)
5
She made a cheese an’ put it on t’ shelf,
She never tonned cheese while cheese tonned self. (turned)
6
She roasted a hen both feather and gut,
’Eead an’ tail an’ wattles an’ foot.
(head) (wattles=loose folds of skin on a hen’s neck)
7
She did a far dottier trick than that, (dirtier)
She let bairn shit in ’is father’s neet-cap. (night-cap)
Accompanied on refrains by Steve Gardham, Ray Padgett, Sam Dodds and Ray Black.
Recorded by Ray Padgett at Ray Black’s Harrogate home, 11th March, 2007.
This is a traditional song about Yorkshire, collected in Yorkshire.
Here is a localized version of a widely known song found all over the English-speaking world. Its evolution can be traced back to broadsides of the early nineteenth century but it probably is much older as these are widely differing texts. Certainly the Crome and Birt texts show signs of having come from oral tradition. In fact the wide variety of texts and choruses of both oral and printed versions suggest the song has been in existence for a long period and may even be as old as the song it has become crossed with and indeed confused with, the Child ballad ‘The Wife Wrapped in Wetherskin’ (Child 277, Roud 117).
However the two songs must be considered separate songs. Though ‘Robin-a-Thrush’ has a wide stock of verses (26) cataloguing the slatternly behaviour of the wife, rarely do any of these verses occur in the Child ballad and no versions of ‘Robin-a-Thrush’ contain the curing of the wife by beating, either with a holly twig or the excuse of the sheepskin, the main motif in the Child ballad.
What they do have in common is the theme and some choruses. The probability is that there has been cross-pollenation on several occasions. Particularly Scottish versions have a chorus that is closely related to ‘The Wee Cooper of Fife’ a version of the Child ballad, and this in turn is related to southern English choruses of ‘Robin-a-Thrush’. Curiously the Yorkshire version is quite different from other British versions, yet the chorus is related to American versions of the Child ballad.
It is perhaps significant that of the three extant broadside texts, all early nineteenth century, two were printed in Yorkshire, a fourteen-stanza version from York and a five-stanza version from Sheffield, the only other extant version being the seven-stanza version printed by Birt of London. (The song printed by Pitts of London and Coates of Alfreton ‘The Tidy One’ is a complete rewrite in a literary vein wherein all of the wife’s faults are caused by reading novels)
I married a wife in the full of the moon,
A thrifty housewife to be,
’Twas a year too late and a month too soon,
As such was the luck for me,
She gaes to bed when the clock strikes twelve,
So cleanly and tidy was she,
The fleas, lice and bugs, the bed make themselves,
No rest there is for me.
She gets up in the morn when the clock strikes ten,
So clean and so tidy is she,
And she makes her tea in the frying pan,
But no such mess for me,
She sweeps the chamber once a week,
So cleanly and tidy is she,
When she goes out to work she falls asleep,
She is such a thrifty wife to me,
She milks the cow in the chamber pot,
So cleanly and tidy is she,
And she strains the milk in the tail of her s---k,
She is rather too nasty for me.
Instead of the churn staff she puts in her foot,
She may eat all the butter for me,
She sets all the cheese on the shelves,
So cleanly and tidy is she,
And there they may stand and turn themselves,
She is such a thrifty wife to me,
She salts my beef in a two bushel bag,
So cleanly and tidy is she,
There’s maggots crawls out as big as my leg,
She is a thrifty wife to me,
My wife is called the queen of sluts,
So cleanly and tidy is she,
She roasted a hen with feather and guts,
A delicate morsel for me,
She has two teeth in her head like two harrow tines,
An ugly wife is she,
Her ears are like jack asses all hanging behind,
She thinks she is a beauty for me,
She has a nose and a face like a bugle horn,
An ugly wife is she,
And the slaver it hangs down sir as long as my arm,
And a puking it often sets me,
She has eyes in her head like rotten plumbs,
So cleanly and tidy is she.
She is cover’d with scabs as big as my thumb,
The d---l may take her for me.
I pray for the same both morn and noon,
From this plague of my life to be free,
I’ll marry no more in the full of the moon,
For the sake of this torment to me,
Each night I have trouble to put her to bed,
For as drunk as a sow is she,
For seven long years I’ve wished her dead,
So d---l come take her from me.
J. Kendrew, York (York Publications 97)
I Married my Wife
In the Full of the Moon,
A tidy hussy, a tidy one,
She made me a Cuckold
Before it was noon,
And was not she a tidy One
My wife she would a milking go
A tidy hussy a tidy one,
She milk’d in the Pail,
And she serv’d the old sow,
And I hope she’ll prove a tidy one.
My wife she would go sile the milk,
A tidy hussy, a tidy one,
She siled it through the tail of her Smock,
Was not she a tidy one.
My wife she would to market go
For to sell her Butter and Eggs,
She suck’d all the yolks,
And Shit in the Shells,
So I hope she’ll prove a tidy One.
My wife she would go make a Cheese,
A tidy hussey, a tidy one,
But she never turn’d the Cheese
So the Cheese it turn’d itself.
And I hope she’ll prove a tidy one.
Crome, Sheffield. Bodleian Ballads Harding B28 (247)
‘Willy went to Westerdale’ was widely sung in the Whitby area and it appears in several collections. Westerdale is a small village at the head of Eskdale just up from Castleton. Littlebeck, where John Greaves comes from, is down the valley nearer to Whitby.
It was first recorded in the 1960s by Mary and Nigel Hudleston from the singing of Johnny Gibbons of Sleights.(See ‘Songs of the Ridings’, Pindar, 2001, p161)
The song is a good example of an enumerative catalogue song (Renwick, Recentering Anglo/American Folksong, University Press of Mississippi, 2001, Chapter 3) in that it consists of a list of the wife’s failings in no particular order, with the exception of her cheese-making efforts, which would qualify it as an incremental catalogue song. In the longer broadside version all of the milking/cheese-making takes place in the space of two and a half stanzas, the rest of the song being in no particular order.