What delightful songs and choruses I heard in those days! At the village pub where my father used to call on a Saturday night, I have heard him sing song after song. I also heard him sing them at home, and when he lived with us as he did for the last few years before he died, he has delighted my children and many a visitor by singing, amongst others, Dan Bedford Leno’s song :—

“Give me the spade and the man that can use it,
A fig for your lord with his soft silken hand,
Let the man that has strength never stoop to abuse it,
Give it back to the giver, the land, boys, the land.
There’s no bank like the earth to deposit your treasure,
The more you deposit and the more you shall have,
If you’ve more than you want, then give to a neighbour,
And your name shall be blessed by the free and the brave.”

I think I have heard that the famous Drury Lane comedian, Dan Leno, was a son of the writer of the noted song “Give me the Spade.”