On the eve of the Fifth of November two or three dozen lads went round Kirkby Stephen roaring a rhyme to collect money for gunpowder and tar barrels. After the usual lines about Guy Fawkes, it hailed the lady of the house as Queen Mary’s daughter and asked her for money to kindle the bonfire. Denham took it down from a lad who had often shouted it, but neither of them could explain the Queen Mary line.
Queen Mary’s daughter at Kirkby Stephen
4 November · Kirkby Stephen, Westmorland
No longer kept
A doggrel hominy roared (not sung) at the full extent of the voices of two or three dozen lads at Kirkby Stephen in Westmoreland, on the eve of the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot
From The Denham Tracts, vol. 2, p. 15. Read the original
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