Have You Any Bread and Wine (English Soldiers, Roman Soldiers)

DESCRIPTION: "Have you any bread and wine, My fairy and my forey, Have you any.... Within the golden story?" More and more wine is requested, until the questioner is told to go away. The two sides declare allegiance to their lords, then prepare for a fight
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1900 (Thornley)
KEYWORDS: food drink playparty nonballad fight
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North,West),Scotland(Aber)) US(MW,NE,SE) Ireland
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1600, "We Are All King George's Men" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 40-42, "My Fairey and My Forey" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hammond-SongsOfBelfast, pp. 24-25, "The Rovers Meet the Winders" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brady-AllInAllIn, pp. 112-115, "The Roman Soldiers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 75, "Will you give us bread and wine" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 65, "Romans and English" (4 texts, 1 tune)
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #178, "Have You any Bread and Wine?" (2 texts)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5, p. 507, "Yankee Soldiers" (1 short text, 1 tune)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, E.J. Ladbury, "Scraps of English Folklore, VIII. Worcestershire," Vol. XXXV, No. 3 (Sep 1924), #10 pp. 266-267 "The Roman Soldiers" (1 text)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Leah Rachel Clara Yoffie, "Three Generations of Children's Singing Games in St. Louis,"Vol. LX, No. 235 (Jan 1947), #18 pp. 25-26 ("Will you give us bread and wine, bread and wine, bread and wine") (2 texts)
ADDITIONAL: Canon Thornley, "Children's Games as Played at Kirkoswald, Cumberland" [1900] in W.G. Collingwood, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archeological Society (Kendal, 1901 ("Digitized by Google")), Vol. I, pp. 273-274, "Roman Soldiers" (2 texts)
ST Lins040 (Partial)
Roud #8255
ALTERNATE TITLES:
With Eerie and With Orie
NOTES [232 words]: Hammond-SongsOfBelfast: "This song is represented in hundreds of versions all over these islands, a conventionalized confrontation between two factions. According to Lady Gomme in her magnificent collection of 1894 [Alice B Gomme, Children's Singing Games], the game owes its origins to the ritual forays of the Border country. When two classes of mill worker arranged a ritual encounter in a Belfast street, they obeyed the rules of the games, confontation without contact. In this example, the rovers were aggressors, the winders in retreat."
The Hammond-SongsOfBelfast version has the rovers issue a challenge, the rovers advance, the winders reply, the rovers advance again and the winders reply again. Rovers advance with "Ha! Ha! You had to go.... riding on a donkey" [as in some versions of "Hieland Laddie"]; winders reply with "Raddy daddy and we're not beat yet.... A button for your marley." This seems to have degenerated from something like text Ab of Greig/Duncan 8 1600, "We Are All King George's Men" in which King George's men and King William's men alternate declaring allegiance, having wine, challenging to battle, pointing to a battlefield, and calling for support; Greig/Duncan's text B, "With Eerie and With Orie," with no wine, has a pattern similar to Hammond-SongsOfBelfast: only the sides alternating pointing to a battlefield and challenging to fight remains. - BS
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Lins040

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