Anon Whiskey on a Sunday c.1959
The text is a popular Irish folk song, adapted from a song written by Glyn Hughes called The Ballad of Seth Davey. Hughes was a musician based in Liverpool in the 1960s. It appears to include a chorus which is older, possibly dating back to the eponymous Seth Davy. At some stage the song has crossed the Irish Sea where the original reference to Bevington Bush has been replaced with Beggars Bush, taken from the place in Dublin. Possibly the place name has travelled in the other direction and was inserted to add Irish colour to the song to make it more attractive to the large Irish population in Liverpool.
He sits on the corner by ‘ould beggar’s bush atop of an ‘ould packing crate
He’s got three wooden dolls who can dance and can sing and he sits with a smile on his face
CHORUS
Come day go day, I wish in my heart it was Sunday
drinkin’ buttermilk through the week and whiskey on a Sunday
The Original Song
The song laments the death in 1902 of a Jamaican street performer, Seth Davy, who sang and performed with jigdolls dancing on a plank in Bevington, part Liverpool just north of the city centre. He probably didn’t perform outside the Bevington Bush Hotel for long as it only opened in 1900. However, his name may have been associated with it; it offered 500 rooms for a penny a night, but not to habitual drinkers, and later became a Salvation Army hostel. There is no other record that links the hostel with the name Beggars Bush, although it would be consistent with the literary usage. Davy may alternatively/also have performed outside a pub in the area called the The Bush; there is at least one documented example of a Bush pub becoming a Beggars Bush.
Seth Davy is mentioned by Ray Costello in Black Liverpool: The Early History of Britain’s Oldest Black Community 1730-1918 as a “black street entertainer . . . a West African often seen in the Scotland Road area of the city accompanying his cheerful songs with a dancing puppet show.”
Glyn Hughes recorded the song for the musicographer Fritz Spiegl in about 1959. Fritz Spiegl is reported to have discovered an old lantern slides of Liverpool scenes which featured a group of children watching a black man in a bowler hat making some wooden dolls dance on a plank, which could definitely be identified as being near outside the Bevington House Hotel (Fritz Spiegl Liverpool Street Songs and Broadside Ballads.
The original song was recorded by The Spinners. The Irish folk singer Danny Doyle recorded the Irish version in 1968 when it remained at No. 1 in the Irish charts for 10 weeks. It has also been recorded by The Dubliners, Rolf Harris The Irish Rovers, The Weavers, Max Boyce, and others.
Sources
Lyrics
This site also includes links to Mudcat discussions about the song, it’s origins and performance
Bevington Bush and local history
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: David King, Dublin, Flogging Molly, The 'Ol Beggars Bush, songs | No Comments »
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