Beggar Girl, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer, a beggar girl, wanders over mountains and moor, "hungry and barefoot." Her father is dead; she begs food for her mother, herself, and two brothers at home. She asks that the listener think "how hard it would be to beg at a door" for bread
AUTHOR: John W. Chandler (source: notes to Bodleian Harding B 17(21a))
EARLIEST DATE: 1802 (Pye)
KEYWORDS: poverty death hardtimes begging nonballad brother children family father mother
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South)) US(Ro)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 239, "Over the Moor and Over the Mountain" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Ox 228)
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #98, "The Beggar Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #10, p. 33, "Beggar Girl" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Mary Pye, Poems on Several Occasions (Stoke Park, 1802 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 27-28, "The Beggar Girl" (1 text)
Roud #1304
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 17(21a), "The Beggar Girl" ("Over the mountains and over the moor") , J Ferraby. (Hull), 1803-1838; also Harding B 25(160), Harding B 28(114), Johnson Ballads fol. 400 View 2 of 2 [some words illegible], Harding B 11(222), Firth b.34(17) [almost entirely illegible], "The Beggar Girl"
NOTES [53 words]: Pye: "The first and second verses written by a gentleman, the third by me." Only the first verse is also on the broadside and Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames. The second verse is a reworking of the first and the third is something else entirely. If it were not my earliest copy I would not have included it at all. - BS
Last updated in version 6.6
File: WT239

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