Mostly taken from the Yorkshire Almanac, some of them are used in my Yorkshire Almanac Songbook concert programme.
Please note:
- All these street organ arrangements for my modifed Topsy 3 are home-made. Contact me if you want a custom arrangement - whether a modification of a number below or something new - for your own street organ, musical box, barrel piano, or whatever.
- The MP3s below use Virtual Studio Technology: this is NOT the real sound, and someone needs to sing!
- Lyrics or translations can be displayed live on a screen, karaoke-style.
| Title | Artist | La | Year | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The becks | The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 2022 | Song suitable for young and old about Leeds's streams. Based on De Beken by Fred van de Ven. |
| Sing a Little Song - Terylene | Marks & Spencer | en | 1965 | Advert. M&S was of course founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. Video, possibly from another time or person: |
| Rossini on Ilkla Moor, Overture | Eric Fenby | 1938 | Excerpt Video, possibly from another time or person: | |
| With her head tucked underneath her arm | Rudy Vallee / Cyril Smith | en | 1937 | Comic Anne Boleyn ghost song. Tenuous Yorkshire connection: the 2021 Channel 5 period drama was filmed entirely in Yorkshire, featuring Bolton Castle, Markenfield Hall (Ripon), Ripley Castle, Fountains Hall and Castle Howard, Oakwell Hall, Harewood House, East Riddlesden Hall and St Michael’s Church, Emley. |
| The spring-time, o the spring-time! | Alfred Austin / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1885 | From Headingley's Poet Laureate: When little birds begin to build, and buds begin to swell. |
| The woollen aristocracy of Yorkshire | William Henry Tucker / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1864 | |
| Poor Bill Brown | Anon | en | 1860s | The popular, London, revenge version of the ballad of an 18th century Brightside (Sheffield) steelworker and poacher, who was fatally shot and stabbed by a gamekeeper near Rotherham |
| The Maudlin Fair at Hedon | Anon / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1800 | Here’s wrestling and vaulting, and dancing on wire, / With fiddling, and juggling, and men eating fire, / Bold sergeants recruiting, lads ‘listing for life, / And family lessons from Punch and his wife. |
| The dragon of Wantley | Trad. | en | 1740ish | Zoomorphication of Sir Richard Wortley, persecutor of his neighbours: To see this fight, all people then / Got up on trees and houses, / On churches some, and chimneys too, / But these put on their trowses. |
| The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield, with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John | Milbourn / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1685 | Late 17th century broadside ballad. |
| Upon Yorkshire ale | Mathew Stevenson / Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1645 | Pox take your Yorkshire Ale, / It did so firk my tail / That I had like beshit me [...] And know'st thy wily wort, / Is wont to make us squort / Over a thousand hedges |
| The grand old Duke Of York | Trad. | en | 1642 | |
| John Ball's letter and rhyme to the commons of Essex | John Ball / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | 1381 | John the Miller hath ground small, small, small; / The King of Heaven's son shall pay for all. (There is as far as I know no evidence for the claim that Ball was from Colchester, rather than York, where he first worked.) |
| The Summoner's Tale (excerpt) (Canterbury Tales) | Geoffrey Chaucer / The Singing Organ-Grinder | en | Lordings, there is in Yorkshire, as I gesse, / A marshy country called Holderness, / In which there went a limitour about, / To preach, and eke to beg, it is no doubt. | |
| The wanton wife of Castlegate | The Watersons | en | C17th ballad, Roud V14112: Tinkers they are drunkards, / And masons they are blind, / And boat-men they make cuckolds, / Because they'r used kind. | |
| The Richmond Hagmena song | Anon | en | As performed on New Year's Eve by the town crier |
Update: 2023/03/06