To carry out a simple search, type the term that you want to find in the Search box next to the Advanced Search tab, and press enter.
For a more refined search of songs or tunes use the Advanced search function. To carry out a search on two or more terms at once, e.g. Collector+Roud Number, select each term as above and then click search.
Be sure to clear previous searches before starting a new one by clicking on the x next to each search term at the top.
Little is known about this song, which is not to be confused with “The Miller of Dee” or the children’s singing game of the same name. John Emslie, writing in the 1915 edition of ‘Folk Lore’ wrote:
I can laugh, I can sing, I can drive away care
I’ve enough for myself and a little to spare
If a friend by chance should come by this way
We’ll make him as welcome as the flowers in May.
I heard this song sung as a boy in English Bicknor, Gloucestershire, in 1880.
The tune for this fragment can be found here.
It is a rare song but versions were collected in Yorkshire in the 1960s and Derbyshire in 1970.
Notes by Gwilym Davies 2 April 2016