Audio File – Harvey Darvey played for Dancing – Catch Up Your Heels  2005:

Several versions of Harvey Darvey were recorded by the Racca Project 195-97

Notes on Harvey Darvey: Old Cornwall Journal Vol. 1. No. 6, p.36

Mr R J Noall has shown the St Ives Old Cornwall Society how, in his childhood “Harvey Darvey” was played, two children walking a few paces side by side, with arms interlaced and hands clasped behind their backs, but in such a way that they could each spin about and walk in the opposite direction without unclasping them, this was while singing.

Harvey Darvey dressed in black

Silver buttons down his back

Every button cost a crown

Harvey Darvey turn around

This seems to be a better version of a rhyme, evidently meant for the same game, that is printed in Halliwells “Nursery Rhymes of England” (p142 1846 ed

Parson Darby wore a black gown

And every button cost half a crown

From port to port and toe to toe

Turn the ship and away we go.

In this port to port and turn the ship, seem to be a nautical corruption of something more like the end lines of another version in Halliwell (p194) but here again we find Darby as the hero though he is given a Joan for a companion.

Darby and Joan were dressed in black

Sword and buckle behind their back

Foot for foot and knee for knee

Turn about Darby’s company.

Sword and buckle is likely to be a corruption of silver buttons, as in the Cornish version, but the three  versions suggest that actually there should be at least two verses, in one of which the end lines may have been .

Heel to Heel and Toe to Toe

Turn around and away we go

A spoken rhyme used for the game at Hayle was

Anna Maskee, Anna Maskee

Lock the door and turn the key