Note Note — No 95 TOBACCO IS AN INDIAN WEED

95. Tobacco is an Indian Weed. This old and famous song was written, it is thought, by George Withers, as Mr. Collier found a copy of it in MS. of the date of James I., with his initials to it. It is found in "Merry Drollery Complete," 1670, and on a Broadside dated 1672. We give the tune to which it is sung around Dartmoor and in Cornwall; this is entirely distinct from that to which it is sung elsewhere, as printed by Chappell, ii. p. 564, which is the air given by D'Urfey in his "Pills to Purge Melancholy," 1719, iii. 292. A Somerset version was sung at the Folk-Song Competition at Frome, 1904. Snatches of the song are given in "Handy Andy," so that we may assume that it is also well known among the Irish peasantry; another instance of the way in which English songs have travelled into Ireland. We took down our tune from John Potter, Merripit, Postbridge, and from Anne Roberts, Scobbetor, and H. Westaway, Belstone; also one obtained from an old man at Newton Abbot, sent to me.