“The Turnip-Hoer”
Description
Singer hires on a farm; the farmer says he's first class. He hires elsewhere, and says if he had a son he'd be better off going to jail. He says that while some delight in harvesting and mowing, "of all the jobs that be on a farm/Give I the turnip-hoing."
Long description
Singer hires on a farm; the farmer says he's first class. He hires on another farm, and says if he had a son he'd be better off going to jail. He says that while some delight in harvesting and mowing, "of all the jobs that be on a farm/Give I the turnip-hoing." Chorus: "For the flies...got on the turnips/It's all me eye and no use to try/To keep 'em off them turnips"
Notes
Kennedy states, "[T]he song has attached itself to Wiltshire and was adopted as the regimental march of the Wiltshire Regiment... now amalgamated [in 1959] with the Berkshire Regiment [to form] the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment."
According to Ian S. Hallows, _Regiments and Corps of the British Army_, however, the quick march of the Duke of Edinburgh's Regiment is The Farmer's Boy and the slow is Auld Robin Gray. And while some regiments dropped their historical tunes on amalgamation, so the Wiltshire regiment could have used this piece, it was normal to keep both tunes.
Roud lumps this with "The Flies Are On the Tummits," with which it shares some lyrics, but Ben Schwartz and I both consider the general plots distinict enough to split them. "The Turnip-Hoer" is about the singer's employment history; "The Flies Are On the Tummits" about the hard life of a farmer.
Widespread growing of turnips, incidentally, was a relatively recent practice (turnips, after all, are bitter and rather unpleasant to eat); they are grown because they replenish the soil, and can be farmed on a field that would otherwise have to lie fallow (see Derek Beales, _From Catlereight to Gladstone: 1815-1885_, p. 36). - RBW
Cross references
- cf. "The Flies Are On the Tummits" (them of a turnip farmer's life)
Recordings
- Fred Perrier et al, "The Turmut [Turmont] Hoer's Song" (on Lomax41, LomaxCD41)
References
- Kennedy 261, "The Turnip-Hoer" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Roud #1376
- BI, K261