I'm One of the Olden Time

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, I was born some years ago When George the Third was King, And yet it seems but yesterday, For time is on the wing." The singer is "One of the olden time... Of fifty years ago." Having reached seventy, he is now slow -- but the old days were better
AUTHOR: Harry Clifton (source: FolkSongAndMusicHall
EARLIEST DATE: 1867 (FolkSongAndMusicHall)
KEYWORDS: age nonballad
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1760-1820 - Reign of George III in Great Britain
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Bryants-Put-Me-In-My-Little-Bed-Songster, p. 10, "I'm One of the Olden Time" (1 text)
Jim-the-Carter-Lad-Songster, pp. 37-38, "I am one of the Oldten Time; Or, Fifty Years Ago" (1 text)
FolkSongAndMusicHall, "I am one of the olden time"
Roud #13773
NOTES [178 words]: The presence of this song in American songsters is an interesting testament to the popularity of Harry Clifton. When Clifton wrote this song in 1867, there were assuredly people in Britain who had been born the reign of George III, who after all was King until 1820 (although he was blind and considered insane by the end of his reign). Indeed, if the year is 1867, then a man of seventy would have been 23 at the time of George's death, and memories of fifty years ago would take him back to the Regency era.
But the United States had formally won independence from Britain in 1783. An American born in that year would have been 84, not 70, in 1867, and would not have remembered George III's period as King of the American colonies anyway. An American who remembered George III as King would have to be in his nineties. Finding this song in a American songsters is truly curious.
Keen-Love-Among-Der-Sweitzer-Songster, p. 32, has a song, "Fifty Years Ago," said to be written by Charlie Howard, which looks like a version of this adapted to America of the 1860s. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: BPLB010

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