Spencer the Rover

According to The New Penguin Book of English Folks Song, the earliest collected version of this song was from Derbyshire in the 1870s but it appeared in Broadsides dating back to the 1820s and 1830s.

The song was popular with singers in Yorkshire and a number of collectors thought it must have been composed in Yorkshire as most versions make reference to Yorkshire as a location within the song.

This was clearly a popular song with country singers but when I first heard it I felt it had something of the sentimental Victorian parlour ballad about it.

In my version I accompany myself on ukulele as I do on most subsequent songs that will appear in this blog as I have become involved in producing entries for the Ukulele Underground Seasons of the Ukulele series of contests.