Lyrics from an old broadsheet. Last verse by me. Tune, like almost every other recording, is a slightly-warped version of the one Dave Moran of The Halliard wrote for these lyrics, back in the day.
The peacock in me would love to go dancing in lavender gloves.

Recorded, in utilitarian fashion, at The Messy Desk, Dublin 4.

Calico Printer's Clerk #4

Inspired by one of my favourite singers of English folk songs, the late Tony Rose, for whom this seemed almost a theme song.
It's a gorgeous tune. The lyrics, I suppose, were devised to lend encouragement to the British sailor, who had a very hard life - "Keep enduring the crap food, the cannonballs and the vicious discipline, Jack and, who knows, you might meet a ravishing chick who will not only give you the time of your life but will slip you a few bob to buy pints for your shipmates." Yeah, right.

Just As The Tide Was Flowing #4

The recruiting sergeant casts a dark shadow over English folk song. The minute you put down your pitchfork some flash bastard in a red coat is offering you money, getting you pissed or both. Next day you wake up to the sound of cannon balls. This song, from the North East, is sung from a woman's perspective. It's always the ones who are left behind who get the fuzzy end of the lollipop

The White Cockade

Used to be a middle aged hippie against the bomb.
And a food and drink writer of some repute.
Now a curmudgeonly unreconstructed old folkie.
Friend of Spike Lancaster.

ERNIE WHALLEY