Note Note — No 109 THE MERRY HAYMAKERS

109. The Merry Haymakers. This quaint carol-like song was taken down from John Woodrich, who learned it, about 1850, and he says that it was his father's favourite song, also from James Parsons. Neither knew the words in their entirety, but they may be found in "West Country Garlands," B.M. (11,621, b 11), and among the Broadsheets of Pitts, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, beginning "In the merry month of June." The words also in Bell's "Ballads of the English Peasantry," p. 171. Dr. Brushfield of Budleigh Salterton has kindly sent me a MS. copy of the end of the seventeenth century or early in the eighteenth. The words, however, did not fit the tune comfortably, and I was constrained to re-write the song.