Herring Loves the Moonlight, The (The Dreg Song)

DESCRIPTION: "The herring loves the moonlight, The mackerel loves the wind; But the oyster loves the dredging song, For she comes of a gentle kind." The oysters are called, and hearers are urged to buy them.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1962 (Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose), with related materials going back to at least 1776 (Herd)
KEYWORDS: food fishing
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #870, p. 325, "(The herring loves the merry moonlight)"
Tobitt-TheDittyBag, p. 140, "The Oyster Fishers' Song" (1 short text, 1 tune, possibly this)
Tobitt-YoursForASong, p 30, "The Oyster Fishers' Song" (1 short text, 1 tune, possibly this)
DT, DREGSONG?
ADDITIONAL: Lady Caroline Kerrison, edited with notes by Lucy Toulmin Smith, _A Common-place Book of the Fifeenth Century: A Religious Play and Poetry, Legal Forms, and Local Accounts_, privately printed, 1886, p. 11, "(no title)" (1 short text)
Roud #8628?
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Quo' the Haddock to the Skate" (lyrics)?
cf. "The Fox Loves the Valley" (lyrics)
NOTES [398 words]: This is rather a conundrum, though it may be the fault of one or another of the Fisher Family (probably Archie). There is, in Herd, a song beginning "I rade to London yesterday," and continuing
Hay-cock, quo' the seale to the eel,
Cock nae I my tail weel?
Tail-weel, or if hare,
Hunt the dog frae the deer,
This was recorded by Cilla Fisher. A similar song is indexed as "Quo' the Haddock to the Skate." The version in the Digital Tradition ends with
The oysters are a gentle kin,
They winna tak unless you sing.
Come buy my oysters aff the bing,
To serve the sheriff and the king,
And the commons o' the land,
And the commons o' the sea;
Hey benedicte, and that's good Latin.
Murray Shoolbraid's Digital Tradition notes imply that this is from another source.
And Archie Fisher has recorded that as "Dreg Song." But he prefaces it with a verse quoted as a Mother Goose rhyme by the Baring-Goulds (#870): "The herring loves the moonlight...." But this is from Walter Scott. There is, however, a very similar rhyme in Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes (#206): "The hart he loves the high wood, The hare she loves the hill; The knight he loves his bright sword, The lady loves her will," which is thematically similar to some of the tales related to "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" [Child 31]."
The Toulmin Smith book cited above give the earliest form of the poem about the hart, from New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS. 365 [olim Ipswich County Hall deposit, Hillwood; prior Brome Hall, Suffolk], copied in the fifteenth century:
The hart lovyt þe wood, the hare lovyt þe hyll;
The knyth lovyt hys sword, the carll lovyt hys byll;
The fowlle lovyt hys folly, the wysseman lovyt hys skyll,
The properte of a shrod qwen ys to have hyr wyll.
(Toulmin Smith, p. 11) i.e.
The hart loves the wood, the hare loves the hill,
The knight loves his sword, the churl loves his bill (bull?);
The fool loves his folly, the wise man love his skill,
The properte of a shrewd (?) queen is to have her will.
This is followed by a series of anti-feminist puzzles encoded in a very simple cipher.
This manuscript is also one of three copies of "The Salutation Carol"; see that entry for background on the manuscript.
So I don't know what genuinely goes with what. For the moment, I'm lumping the whole mess here.
For another example of this sort of verse, see "The Fox Loves the Valley." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: BGMG870

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography