Note Note — No 98 THE BARLEY STRAW

98. Barley Straw. Taken down from the singing of Mr. G.H. Hurell, the blind organist at Chagford, as he heard it sung by a carpenter, William Beare, in 1875. The words were very coarse, consequently Mr. Sheppard re-wrote the song. The air was used by A.S. Rich, without its most characteristic passages, for Hunneman's comic "Old King Cole," pub. circ. 1830. Much the same tune is in Akerman's "Wiltshire Tales," 1853, as a Wiltshire Harvest Home, p. 132. Harmonised in the Æolian mode, though the seventh of the scale is absent.