The Geordie Anthem
© Stephen William Gray
Geordy was born, a little over a century before me, in 1835. Hailing from Gateshead he had been a wagon rider at Hawks, Crayshaw and Company until a severe leg fracture, caused by having to leap off a runaway coal wagon, forced his retirement. No longer fit for pit work he became an entertainer and was locally very popular with his comic Irish songs and self-written Tyneside dialect songs. He performed in music-halls such as the Wheat Sheaf, owned by Mr.Balmbra ("we took the bus from Balmbra's") and working men's social clubs ("and them he was persuading, to go and see Geordy Ridley's concert at the Mechanics Hall at Blaydon").
His songs were often based on real-life characters and observations. His hits included "Johnny Luik-Up the Bellman" and "the Bobby Cure" which took the rise out of the local poliss. Apart from "Blaydon Races" his most well-known surviving song is probably "Cushie Butterfield". It was said that he had to go into hiding for a short while to avoid Cushie's relatives after they heard the immortal words:
She's a big lass and a bonnie lass
An' she likes her beer
They call her Cushie Butterfield
An' I wish she wes heor
George had a more famous (at the time) brother, John, who was England's champion miler in 1871. And it was through a sporting occasion that "Blaydon Races" first made its appearance. Geordy's song was actually written before the famous event that it describes. He performed it as part of a benefit concert for the Geordie rowing hero, Tommy Clasper, at Balmbra's on Thursday 5th June, whereas we all know that the races took place "on the ninth of June, in eighteen hundred and sixty two, on a summer's afternoon". His lyrics were likely to have been based on stories from the previous year's race meeting, although the final verse "the rain it poured down all day an' made the grounds quite muddy" is a later addition describing conditions in 1862. In fact the storms were so bad that racing had to be delayed until the horses could be safely transported to the start. No wonder the crowd were shouting "whe stole the cuddy?"
Quite a bit is known about two of the characters who appear in the song. Coffee Johnny, real name John Oliver, was a smith from neighbouring Winlaton. He was a very tall man, given to wearing a white top hat and to attending funeral processions as well as hunt meetings and hoppings. He was a noted bare-fist fighter, although said to be a gentle man, and he was closely associated with the Winlaton Brass Band with which he was photographed. He was a favourite of Lord Ravensworth after rescuing his daughter from a bog by lifting her and her horse out of the mud. He boasted to Ravensworth that he would one day be a bigger landowner than the lord, and indeed he was, because when he died it took a patch of ground seven feet long to bury him in, whereas Ravensworth was considerably shorter than the six feet six Coffee and so "owned" a smaller plot. He was accompanied by his beloved Winlaton Brass Band, playing "Johnny Comes Marching Home", as his coffin made its way from Blaydon railway station to his grave in Winlaton chuchyard. More on Coffee Johnny can be found on the Genuki website.
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