Note Note — No 33 CHILDE THE HUNTER

33. Childe the Hunter. Words taken in a fragmentary form from Jonas Coaker. He had used up the material of the ballad, incorporating it into a "poem" he had composed on Dartmoor, and vastly preferred his own doggerel to what was traditional. The Æolian melody given is that to which the Misses Phillips, who were born and reared at Shaw, on Dartmoor, informed me that they had heard the ballad sung about 1830. We also obtained this air to "Cold blows the wind." It is unquestionably an early harp tune, not later than the reign of Henry VII. For the story of Childe of Plymstock, see Murray's "Handbook of Devon," ed. 1887, p. 208; more fully and critically in W. Crossing's "Ancient Crosses of Dartmoor," 1887, p. 51.