Dolly and the bawdy ballad

Dolly Rolands had been born Dalores Worthy in an upstairs room of the Jolly Farmer tavern, and had lived there all her life. Growing up she had helped out and learned the tavern’s trade, pouring tankards of ale and taking money from about the age of twelve. She had been eighteen when she met her husband who had been taken on as a ploughboy at a local hiring fayre by one of the local farmers a few weeks earlier.

Sam was sixteen, very tall, thin as a hay rake, and cripplingly shy. The fact that he had entered the tavern at all was a miracle, but he had been persuaded to go with two of the other farm labourers one lunchtime, having been told that the food was good, and cheap, and the ale was some of the best around.

Knowing he was shy, the other two farm hands decided to play a trick on him, and told Sam to order food and ale for the three of them, but hung back deliberately as he nervously approached the bar where Dolly was working with her back to the taproom. She was singing a somewhat bawdy Music Hall ballad about a blacksmith trying to woo a high-born lady-fair.

It was a duet, the man and woman singing alternate verses, and as Dolly sang, she changed her voice to sing the man’s part as well.

Each time the lady in the song refused the blacksmith’s advances, he would mime hitting an anvil with a hammer and sing, “bang, bang, bang” in time to the beat of a base drum to show his frustration of having been turned down, again.

Finally though, he gets his way and they marry. The last line is sung by the man about taking his new wife to his marriage bed, ending with a salacious wink, and again the words, “bang, bang, bang,” at which point the audience would roar with laughter.

Dolly had already run through the first three verses and drew breath to sing the next male part, when a soft, sweet voice began singing instead. She turned to see this gangling youth, blushing fiercely but gamely continuing to sing.

At the end of the verse, she smiled as he banged his fist on the bar three times as he sang the words, then she took up the next verse, with the young lad following on, until they had sung it all the way through to the end, then they both laughed.

Dolly’s mother had come out from the back to watch the performance, wanting to see who had such a fine voice, and smiled as she saw her daughter enjoying herself so much. They both liked to visit the Music Hall in the nearby town, and went as often as they could, singing the most popular songs on the way back home.

“That was really good,” said Dolly. “You have a beautiful singing voice. What’s your name?”

The lad opened and closed his mouth a few times but no sound came, tongue-tied and nervous he was, now that such a pretty girl was talking to him.

“He’s called Sam” one of the farmhands called out, laughing as he did at the lad’s awkwardness.

“You-ell” muttered the lad.

“Pardon”, said Dolly, confused by what she had heard.

“You-ell. It’s Sam-uel, not Sam. My Ma always called me by my proper name, but was the only one who ever did. She’s gone now, so I want everyone to call me that to remember her by.”

“Well then, Samuel, you have a lovely voice and I enjoyed singing with you, but I’m sure your friends didn’t bring you here to hear you sing, so what can I get for you three?”

With a little prompting from Dolly, he managed to order ale, with bread and cheese. As he went to sit down, Dolly’s mother said, “Yours is on the house today, Samuel, as a reward for giving us such a fine performance.”

Just as the three men were leaving, Dolly called him over to the bar, and with a bit more prompting, well actually, with an awful lot of prompting, she got him to ask her if she wanted to go to the village fayre a week hence.

When the three got outside, one of the men asked him what the barmaid had wanted. Not quite sure he could believe what had happened, he stalled for a moment and then said with a look of wonderment on his face, “I’m taking her to the village fair next week.”

The two men were stunned, then one clapped him on the back saying, “Bravo,” and burst out laughing when the other one gave a wink and then slapped Samuel three times on the back shouting, “Bang, bang, bang!”

Poor Samuel was completely bewildered. He never had understood why everyone laughed at the last line of the last verse. Not that is, until the following summer at least, when Dolly took him to the loft above the brewery and “enlightened” him on a bed of hay.

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Thank you,I really enjoyed that Mr Cake

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Me too! :smiley:

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Thanks.
It’s part of a novella I started writing last year in an attempt to stop my brain from seizing up during lockdown, and I realised recently I could take extracts from some of the chapters and turn them into short stories.

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Fantastic words Fruity and she reminded me of someone from my early past from when I was 15 and now she must be long gone, I can reveal her name was Jess and a delightfully buxom school cleaner, daughter of the caretaker/groundsman and head cook.
She was good at her job and also added to my education in ways not included in the curriculum.

Please post some more Fruity :ok_hand::+1:

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I really enjoyed that, thank you :slightly_smiling_face: But now I want to hear the song, you’ll have to write that too!

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They are not my words Maree as it was written by Fruitcake.

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I posted the whole novella on the old site, and have recently written a couple more chapters to fill in the story as the youngster grow up. I like to put in back stories about some of the incidental characters, and Dolly is one of them.

There are two more chapters where I think I can turn them in to stand alone short stories, so I’ll certainly post those, but a lot of the novella chapters won’t make sense on their own in isolation.

Oh blimey, that never occurred to me. :astonished: I’ll have a think about it and see if I can come up with anything, but it will certainly be a challenge.

Tumty tumty tumty tum,
For to sell her wares,
Tumty tumty tumty tum,

… No, that isn’t going to work. sigh

Fruity goes to the smallest room to seek solace and inspiration

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Yes, write the song! Then we could get a musical type on here to record it :notes::blush: