Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/269

Rh Opening lines of a Tinker's song in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), quoted, with the air, in Chappell's National English Airs, No. 166. No. 167 is another Tinker's song, "There was a Jovial Tinker," from the same source. The notes on these songs are interesting: see also that on the Carman's Whistle, No. 231.

I have two Shropshire songs with the refrains—

and

These may be called the ploughman's refrains, but the words have nothing to do with agriculture.

A Shropshire Hunting Song (a doggerel account of a run, 1790-1800) has the refrain—

This had degenerated into a nursery rhyme as early as 1825-1830, at Bury, in Lancashire.

Tee=a cow-tie.

Cush-cow (pronounced cuosh (glossic), the uo like oo in wood) means a hornless cow in some parts of North Shropshire. In the Swaledale dialect, cush is a call-word to cows. In Icelandic, kussa is a cow; kus, a call-word to cows.—See, Shropshire Word-Book, p. 110, s. v. Cush-cow.

"They have a custom in Cheshire, which I well remember witnessing in the parish of Northen, when I was a little boy. A Mrs. Evans,