Henry's Songbook

(as sung by The Watersons)

[1966:] This rousing and convivial song may be found in the collection of English songs made by William Alexander Barrett and published in 1891. Barrett noted his budget of songs at harvest homes, sheep shearings, ploughing matches and from itinerant ballad-singers (like the ones interviewed by Mayhew and his team of early sociologists in mid-Victorian times) who still lifted up their cracked voices in the city streets. - Alfred Williams collected in the countryside around the Upper Thames in the early part of this century and found Fathom the Bowl sung all the way from Malmesbury to Oxford. His singers usually followed it with a spoken toast, a pithy and familiar bit of folk wisdom:

Here's to the large bee that flies so high!
The small bee gathers the honey,
The poor man he does all the work
The rich man pockets the money.

(A. L. Lloyd, notes 'The Watersons')

[1979:] 'Punch' comes from the Hindi word, panch (five), because of its five ingredients, spirit, water, lemon-juice, sugar and spices. The word was first recorded in English in 1669, but I would estimate the song to date from about a century later. I cannot help feeling that it has overtones of smuggling, for customs duties were very high at the time, and ordinary people would seldom have been able to enjoy punch made from spirits acquired through legitimate channels. The mysterious last verse may well refer to a dead smuggler. This is speculation. What is sure, is that the song was popular in country districts long after the passing of the old smugglers. Alfred Williams, for example, found it 'fairly well known from Malmesbury to Oxford' in 1914-16 (Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923, p. 88). (Palmer, Country 198)