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Title
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Leather bottel
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Singer
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Unknown
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Notes
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Williams, Alfred: Ms / WGS / FSUT: 'Few folk songs, perhaps, enjoyed more popularity than the Leather Bottel during the early and middle part of the nineteenth century. At this time, however, it is seldom to be met with and can be obtained only with great difficulty. I have heard it in every quarter of the upper Thames Valley though I have met with no one who could recite the piece complete. By carefully noting and comparing the different verses and inquiring as to the number of them, and the vessels introduced, I ultimately arrived at the following, which, I am perfectly certain, was the version most in use here. At Brize Norton I heard the whole, except the first verse and chorus, which my informant had forgotten. The opening and a good deal of what follows I first heard at Down Ampney. There were other versions fragments of which I have heard, as, for instance in which occurs:
For when a poor man has a penny to spend,
Away with his pitcher pot he will wend.
An old inn called the Leather Bottle, stands near Challow railway station, Berkshire. Upon the signboard of this is depicted the flat shaped leather bottel, the original of the song.'
Transcribed and edited by Chris Wildridge, 2010.
