> Ashley Hutchings and The Albion Band > Songs > The Albion Dance Band: Hopping Down in Kent

Hopping Down in Kent

[Trad. arr. Albion Dance Band]

Ashley Hutchings noted in his songbook A Little Music:

Until fairly recently the annual excursion to pick hops in Kent was the only holiday of the year for many Cockney families. It wasn't much of a rest for them, as this song indicates.

Gypsies, too, were regular hop-pickers - going where the seasonal work took them. This tune was collected from a Sussex gypsy, Mary Ann Haynes, by Mike Yates.

This song was recorded by the Albion Band for a single in 1976 and included in their 1977 album The Prospect Before Us. The Albion Dance Band performed this twice on BBC radio sessions. One with Shirley Collins singing was recorded on 22 July 1976 and included in The BBC Sessions; the other and much faster one with John Tams singing on probably 31 May 1977 was published on The Albion Band Live in Concert - BBC Radio 1. Both versions were also added to the Ashley Hutchings 4CD anthology Burning Bright. The Albion Band also performed this song live in Switzerland in 1978 at the 7. Folk-Festival auf der Lenzburg.

Compare this to Louise Fuller singing Hopping Down in Kent in a c. 1974 recording in Sussex by Mike Yates on the Topic LP Green Grow the Laurels: Country Singers from the South and CD Hidden English: A Celebration of English Traditional Music and on The Rough Guide to English Roots Music.

Lyrics

Now hopping's just beginning,
We've got some time to spend.
We've only come down hopping
To earn a quid if we can.

Chorus (after each verse):

With a tee-i-ay, tee-i-ay
Tee-i-ee-i-ay

Every Monday morning
Just at six o'clock
You'll hear them hoppers calling:
“Get up and boil you pots!”

Early Tuesday morning
The bookie he'll come round
With a bag of money
He'll flop it on the ground.

Says, “Do you want some money?”
“Yes sir, if you please,
To buy a hock of bacon
And a lump of mouldy cheese.”

Now here comes our old measurer
With his long nose and chin
And his ten-gallon basket
And don't he pop 'em in!

Now hopping is all over
All the money spent
Don't I wish I'd never done
No hopping down in Kent.

I say one, I say two,
No more hopping I shall do.
Tee-i-ay, tee-i-ay
Tee-i-ee-i-ay

Acknowledgements

The lyrics were copied from the Ashley Hutchings songbook A Little Music.