Chairs to Mend

DESCRIPTION: Round. "Chairs to mend? Old chairs to mend? Rush or cane bottom; ...? New mackerel! ... Old rags? ... Any hare skins, or rabbit skins?"
AUTHOR: William Hayes (1708-1777) (according to Heighes)
EARLIEST DATE: 1773 (Hayes, according to Heighes)
KEYWORDS: commerce nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 92, "Old chairs to mend! Old chairs to mend!" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Bk 1, "Chairs to Mend")
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 300, "Chairs to Mend" (1 text)
Scott-EnglishSongBook, pp. 26-27, "Three Oxford Cries" (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 438, 447, "Chairs to Mend" (notes only)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, p. 104, "Chairs to Mend" (1 text, 1 tune, listed as "adapted")
SongsOfManyNations, "Chairs to Mend" (1 text, 1 tune) (CC edition, p. 9)
ADDITIONAL: Joseph Ritson, Gammer Gurton's Garland (London, 1810 ("Digitized by Google")), p. 43, "Old Chairs and Old Clothes" (1 text)
Roud #1335
NOTES [151 words]: According to "Chairs to Mend" at The Fabulous Songbook at the Kristin C Hall site, "This round clearly comes from 'Three Oxford Cries' made into a round by W Hayes published in 1786.... These would have been the cries made by a chair-mender, fishmonger, ragpicker & skinner in turn as they plied their trades daily on the streets of Oxford in the 1700s & 1800s." The first line, "Chairs to mend, old chairs to mend," is listed among the catalog of works of William Hayes printed in William Hayes, Catches, Glees and Canons, Three, Four and Five Voices; The Third Edition (Oxford, 1773) according to Simon Heighes, The Lives and Works of William and Philip Hayes (1708-77 & 1738-97) (New York, 1995), pp. 330-331.- BS
Roud lumps this with "If I'd As Much Money As I Could Spend," which clearly was inspired by "Chairs to Mend," but I am not convinced they are of common origin, so I've split them. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: WT300

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