> The Watersons > Songs > Dido, Bendigo

Dido, Bendigo

[Trad. arr. Watersons]

Sung by the Watersons (Lal, Mike and Norma Waterson and John Harrison) on The Watersons. Like all but one tracks from this LP, it was re-released in 1994 on the CD Early Days. It was also reissued in 2003 on The Definitive Collection and on the Topic 4CD sampler The Acoustic Folk Box. A live recording from 1990 at the Folk Festival Sidmouth was published in 2004.

A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

A stirring old hunting song known all over England from Cumberland to Cornwall. George Townshend of Sussex sings a particularly fine version but the tune is more or less constant wherever it is found and, though the name of the sporting duke may vary, the list of hounds stays much the same. Country people must have loved to roll the grandiloquent syllables of names like Dido and Bendigo around their mouths.

Sabine Baring-Gould took the words and melody from a man named James Oliver and printed it in his Songs of the West under the title The Duke's Hunt. He says: “This is a mere cento from a long ballad, entitled The Fox Chase, narrating a hunt by Villiers, second duke of Buckingham, in the reign of Charles II. It is in the Roxburgh Collection and was printed by W. Oury, circa 1650.” The song has had a long life and still flourishes.

Lyrics

As I was a walking one morning last autumn
I've overheard some nobles foxhunting
Between some noblemen and the Duke of Wellington
So early before the day was dawning.

Chorus (after each verse):

There was Dido, Bendigo, Gentry he was there-o
Traveler, he never looked behind him.
There was Countess, Rover, Bonnie Lass and Jover
These were the hounds that could find him.

Well the first fox being young,
And his trials just beginning
He's made straight way for his cover
He's run up yon highest hill
And gone down yon lowest gill
Thinking that he'd find his freedom there forever.

Well the next fox being old,
And his trials fast advancing
He's made straight way for the river
Well the fox he has jumped in
But an hound jumped after him
It was Traveler who straited him forever.

Well they run across the plain
But they soon returned again
The fox nor the hounds never failing
It's been just twelve months today,
Since I heard the squire say,
Hark, forward then me brave hounds forever.

Acknowledgements

From the Digital Tradition, at the Mudcat Café.