G'day Tom & Mags
Many thanks for your efforts, info and links. Much appreciated.
The Courier date reference rang a bell, so I checked my files and found that I had a copy of this article. There's the info past of the article at the start and then there's the full words (lyrics) of the poem (song) 'Brave Haddington for me'.
I won't type out the words (lyrics) yet (8 verses plus the chorus), but here's the full transcript of the Courier article. I hope you like it as much as I did. It's the only evidence I've found so far that links the song to David Cockfield (snr), which he must have written when roughly in his 20s.
Cheers for now, Bonza
BRAVE HADDINGTON FOR ME
Source: Haddington Courier, 03 Oct 1862, p.3, col.4
SIR - The following song was a great favourite among the Haddingtonians some sixty or seventy years ago, and is still recollected by some of the older indwellers of the burgh.
David Cockfield, a painter, was understood to be the author of it.
It was always sung at the yearly convivial celebration of good old George the Third's birthday, and, so long as the birthday celebrations were kept up, by a decent respectable Haddingtonian - viz., Mr William Colstan, tobacconist, whose bye name was "Rowland Kiddess."
Mr Colston died at Gifford at the long age of about ninety, and his daughter Miss Colston is now post mistress there.
Although it cannot lay claim to much poetic beauty, yet it deserves to be preserved as an interesting relic of former years, and therefore I hope you will give it a place in your columns - I am, & c., J.M., Haddington, 26th Sept., 1862.
