Foggy Dew

A.L. Lloyd Songs The Foggy Dew Shirley Collins Songs The Foggy Dew Martin Carthy Songs The Foggy Dew In 1689, the London printer, J. Millet, issued from Little Britain a sheet headed The Fright’ned York-shire Damosel, or, Fears Dispers’d by Pleasure . The twelve-verse ballad celebrates a man’s successful wheeze to inveigle a woman into his bed when his friends frighten her by dressing up as a ghost, or ‘bogulmaroo’. This was probably just a tall story but it took hold and became The Foggy Dew , a sly and mellow song, though too strong for some: in the late 40s and early 50s the BBC banned from the air a record of Peter Pears singing Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the Suffolk version (HMV, D.A. 1873). Phil Hammond of Holt, Norfolk, sang The Foggy Dew in a recording made by Peter Kennedy for the BBC on 3 November 1952. It was released on the anthology Songs of Seduction (The Folk Songs of Britain Vol. 2, Caedmon 1961; Topic 1968). Peter Kennedy noted: The Foggy Dew , an even finer and older piece than Blow the Candle Out , did not come into popular circulation until it was bowdlerised by Carl Sandburg and published as a coy gramophone performance by Benjamin Britten. Since then, the song has been much discussed and sung. A number of theories about the meaning of this song have been offered. James Reeves points out that “foggy” in Middle English is a coarse, rank marsh grass and thus may stand for maidenhead, while “dew” probably represents virginity or chastity. It is perhaps more likely that the song had an Anglo-Irish origin and that “foggy dew” is an Englishman’s attempt to pronounce the Irish orocedhu , which means “dark”, or “black night”. Young ladies reputedly like to be protected from the terrors of the dark. Robert Graves carried this orocedhu idea a step further with the suggestion that the verse has a double meaning, standing first for the black pestilence, which may have been abroad at the time of the song’s composition, and second for the black habit worn by nuns. The girl, in such a case, may be asking for refuge from a nunnery. This present text, perhaps the fullest and most rational yet discovered, came from a Norfolk soldier. Major Philip Hammond was a typical military bilingual speaker with an ability to “talk posh” on one hand and use the King’s English on parade, but amongst his fellow countrymen in the tavern he could converse in his own native Norfolk dialect. He claimed to have learned this version from a local tree feller. Since he could not remember the woodsman’s tune, he used the one popularised by Burl Ives and Benjamin Britten. However, among traditional singers in East Anglia, the most common tune is the one used by Robert Burns for his Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon . Perhaps this air may have been attached to The Foggy Dew words in Scotland, as well. Luther Hills sang this clear and charming version of The Foggy Dew uncluttered by the nods, winks and innuendos that normally attend this song, especially when sung by singers unsympathetic to or ignorant of the tradition. Harry Cox sang The Foggy Dew in a recording made by Peter Kennedy in Catfield, Norfolk, in October 1953 on the 1955 HMV album Folk Song Today , in 1965 on Cox’s eponymous EFDSS album Harry Cox , and in 2000 on his Rounder anthology What Will Become of England? . Another recording made by Peter Kennedy at The Windmill , Sutton, Norfolk was released in 1960 on the EMI/HMV EP The Barley Mow: Songs From the Village Inn . Peter Kennedy noted in the Rounder anthology’s booklet: Harry Cox’s tune is the same one that Robert Burns used for his Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon . Possibly Burns appropriated his tune from a Border version of The Foggy Dew . Frank Kidson in 1891, heard a Yorkshire miner using it for The Foggy Dew and Cecil Sharp also found it to be commonly used for Somerset versions. See Peter Kennedy, ed., Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (London, New York, Sydney, Cologne: Oak Publications, 1984), p. 393, for mo