Click on arrow to hear the song performed by Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, to his own piano accompaniment c. 1980.
According to Professor Scott, this is one of the many songs in which we learn lessons from the behavior of children. Tatters, a poor working child, shows us that "fortune little matters" when your heart is full of hope and you you're with one you love. Tatters learns the lesson himself when he becomes rich and powerful in later years.
Bibliography
Scott, Derek B. The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour. 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.
Last modified 25 September 2007