{"id":17166,"date":"2015-09-07T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17166"},"modified":"2015-09-07T14:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:00:12","slug":"those-happy-go-lucky-poor-folks-ive-got-sixpence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/those-happy-go-lucky-poor-folks-ive-got-sixpence\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Happy-Go-Lucky Poor Folks: &#8220;I&#8217;ve Got Sixpence&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KNDcSiG3GwU?rel=0\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: the credit line from the YouTube uploader says, &#8220;From the LP <\/em>More Do-Re-Mi: The Songs Children Love to Sing<em>, Kapp Records, 1963.&#8221;]<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>[Don&#8217;t know what this is? See the series introduction <a title=\"Introducing a New Series: 'Those Happy-Go-Lucky (and Singin' and Dancin') Poor Folks!'\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/introducing-a-new-series-those-happy-go-lucky-and-singin-and-dancin-poor-folks\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">T<\/span>he first statement I ever heard of the &#8220;Poverty can be fun!&#8221; theme came from a 33-1\/3 RPM record album my parents bought when I was a kid. The album (first described <a title=\"Earlier RAMH post: 'The Steam Drill Only Made Nine (Lord, Lord)'\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/the-steam-drill-only-made-nine-lord-lord\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>) was one of a set &#8212; probably twelve &#8212; designed to introduce children to music of various kinds; the disc in question, I think, was called &#8220;Songs of Work&#8221; or some such.<\/p>\n<p>The version in the video above is <em>not<\/em> from the album I remember. I don&#8217;t remember kids&#8217; voices singing this song, although it has supposedly been a traditional summer-camp favorite for decades. No, my version featured a men&#8217;s chorus, strong and hearty, and you could almost imagine them marching home from the mines as they sang. It sounded more like this truncated, one-verse version, from Mitch Miller and &#8220;The Gang&#8221; (as he styled them):<\/p>\n\n<p>Either way, whether you listen to the full-length cover or the foreshortened, you get hit with the message right there in the first two lines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;ve got sixpence,<br \/>\nJolly, jolly sixpence&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even if we can&#8217;t think of a single item which <em>now<\/em> can be obtained for a mere six cents, we get the point: the guy carries a mere handful of change in his sweaty workingman&#8217;s palm&#8230; <em>and is happy about it<\/em>. How can this be? We look to the rest of the first verse:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;I&#8217;ve got tuppence to spend,<br \/>\nand tuppence to lend,<br \/>\nand tuppence to send up to my wife (poor wife).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So not only does he start out with mere pennies; <em>he looks forward to divvying his fortune up even further<\/em>. A third for pleasure! a third to share! and a third, presumably, for expenses (managed by a loving &#8212; albeit poor &#8212; wife)! And if we&#8217;re still skeptical, he continues:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No cares have I to grieve me,<br \/>\nNo pretty little girls to deceive me.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m happy as a king &#8212; believe me &#8212;<br \/>\nAs [I\/we] go rolling home!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The one-verse version of the song misses the finely sharpened knifepoint of the entire song, though. For with each succeeding verse, the amount of cash on hand dwindles, and he must adjust his choices accordingly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;I&#8217;ve got <em>fourpence<\/em><br \/>\nTo last me all my life.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve a penny to spend<br \/>\nAnd a penny to lend<br \/>\nAnd tuppence to take home to my wife, poor wife&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I&#8217;ve got <em>tuppence<\/em><br \/>\nTo last me all my life.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got no pence to spend<br \/>\nAnd no pence to lend<br \/>\nAnd tuppence to take home to my wife, poor wife&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I&#8217;ve got <em>no pence<\/em><br \/>\nTo last me all my life.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got no pence to spend<br \/>\nAnd no pence to lend<br \/>\nAnd no pence to take home to my wife, poor wife&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">T<\/span>he origins of the song (like those of most non-commercial music) are a bit mysterious. It&#8217;s been reworked and re-popularized in various ways over the decades. Sometimes the coin in question isn&#8217;t a sixpence but a shilling; the proportion and amount set aside for spending, lending, and taking (or sending) home vary as well.<\/p>\n<p>We can find one clue to its age, and its purpose (or target audience) in each era, in the words of a sort of follow-on chorus which doesn&#8217;t always appear with the rest of the lyrics. This follows the &#8220;&#8230;as I [or <em>we<\/em>] go rolling home&#8221; line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;No cares have I to grieve me<br \/>\nNo pretty little girls to deceive me<br \/>\nI&#8217;m happy as a lark believe me<br \/>\nAs we go rolling, rolling home<\/p>\n<p>Rolling home (rolling home)<br \/>\nRolling home (rolling home)<br \/>\nBy the light of the silvery moo-oo-oon&#8230;!<br \/>\nHappy is the day when the [worker] gets his pay<br \/>\nAs [I\/we] go rolling (rolling) home!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/ivegotsixpence_lanternslide_ww1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/ivegotsixpence_lanternslide_ww1_sm.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Lantern slide, 1920s-30s, owned by Jack Hayward of England and Australia\" \/><\/a>In various versions I&#8217;ve encountered, the [worker] sometimes becomes <em>soldier<\/em> (in wartime, especially the two World Wars). This would certainly would have been the case with the lyrics illustrated by lantern slide (dated &#8220;1920s-30s&#8221;) shown at the left, apparently from the collection of an Australian stage performer named Jack Hayward. (Details <a href=\"http:\/\/collections.museumvictoria.com.au\/items\/1406272\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/jollytester_metmuseum.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"width: 33%;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/jollytester_metmuseum.jpg?resize=466%2C625&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"'The Jolly Tester': lyrics\" width=\"466\" height=\"625\" \/><\/a>The earliest version of the song I&#8217;ve found, though, appeared in an 1810 edition of a book called <a title=\"Google Books: 'Gammer Gurton's Garland,' 'printed for R. Triphook' (1810)\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=XtAqAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PA40#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Gammer Gurton&#8217;s Garland: Or, the Nursery Parnassus<\/em><\/a> (&#8220;A choice collection of pretty songs and verses, for the amusement of all little good children who can neither read nor run&#8221;); there, although the &#8220;Rolling home&#8221; chorus doesn&#8217;t appear, the song&#8217;s <em>title<\/em> is recorded as &#8220;The Jolly Tester.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The image at right illustrates approximately the same lyrics in a 1907 drawing (pen and black ink, watercolor and graphite) entitled &#8220;The Jolly Tester&#8221; by one Paul Vincent Woodroffe. (It&#8217;s in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The operative word, of course, is <em>tester<\/em>. I&#8217;ve not yet uncovered the nature of a &#8220;tester&#8217;s&#8221; work, but perhaps another clue &#8212; both to the word&#8217;s meaning, and to the song&#8217;s age &#8212; lies in the &#8220;Rolling home&#8230;&#8221; lyric I learned from that old record album:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Happy is the day when the <em>staffman<\/em> gets his pay&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Staffman&#8221; &#8212; another odd word &#8212; seems to be associated with two industries: surveying, and fabric (specifically silk) manufacturing. &#8220;Staffman&#8221; is almost universally defined, for the latter, only as &#8220;a workman employed in silk throwing.&#8221; (The printed lyrics accompanying my old children&#8217;s album included a footnote which described it in pretty much the same general terms.) One page I found, devoted to the genealogy one family in particular, narrows it down to an unspecified involvement in the <em>twisting<\/em> of silk.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the association of <em>staffman<\/em> with the fabric industry, and the appearance of the &#8220;jolly tester&#8221; in the 1907 drawing &#8212; that loooong sash the character seems to be twirling (almost Isadora Duncan-style) &#8212; do seem to associate the song with the fabric industry. Of course, this is the industry most often identified with the first Industrial Revolution, going back to the 1700s, as well as the principal target of one of the earliest labor movements &#8212; <a title=\"Wikipedia, on Luddites\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Luddite\" target=\"_blank\">Luddism<\/a>, in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting, in any case, that the song is sometimes held up as a paean to the appeal of a pleasant, loving home life&#8230; <em>no matter how little one is compensated for one&#8217;s work<\/em>. (Note that the &#8220;Jolly Tester&#8221; version illustrated by the drawing above makes this point explicit in its closing lines: &#8220;I have nothing, I spend nothing; I love nothing better than my wife.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Yet I do wonder, at least, how much the song might subtly but <em>really<\/em> be aimed at convincing dissatisfied laborers to continue working, and damn the pittance wages!<\/p>\n<p>_______<\/p>\n<p><strong>A note on sources:<\/strong> Researching folk songs can lead to much dissatisfaction for the researcher, as well as some pleasant surprises. I found more of the latter than the former at <a title=\"Mudcat Cafe: ' Origins: I've Got Sixpence, Jolly, Jolly Sixpence'\" href=\"http:\/\/mudcat.org\/thread.cfm?threadid=92279\" target=\"_blank\">this discussion<\/a> on the &#8220;Mudcat Cafe&#8221; forum for discussing traditional and folk music. For information on the British coin of the title, you can (as is often the case) profitably start with <a title=\"Wikipedia, on the British sixpence coin\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sixpence_%28British_coin%29\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: the credit line from the YouTube uploader says, &#8220;From the LP More Do-Re-Mi: The Songs Children Love to Sing, Kapp Records, 1963.&#8221;] [Don&#8217;t know what this is? See the series introduction here.] he first statement I ever heard of the &#8220;Poverty can be fun!&#8221; theme came from a 33-1\/3 RPM record album my parents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[96,593,4154,74,324],"tags":[1931,2082,4160,4161],"class_list":{"0":"post-17166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics-in-the-news","7":"category-history-in-the-news","8":"category-those-happy-go-lucky-poor-folks","9":"category-music","10":"category-researchresources","11":"tag-folk-music","12":"tag-economics","13":"tag-capitalism","14":"tag-home-life","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4sS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17166"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17194,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17166\/revisions\/17194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}