" Nellie Dean" is a sentimental ballad in common time

Common Time

"Common Time" is a science fiction short story written by James Blish. It first appeared in the August 1953 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and has been reprinted several times: in the 1959 short-story collection Galactic Cluster; in The Testament of Andros ; in The Penguin Science Fiction...

 by Henry W. Armstrong

Henry W. Armstrong

Henry W. "Harry" Armstrong was a U.S. boxer, booking agent, producer, singer, pianist and Tin Pan Alley composer.His biggest hit was "Sweet Adeline", written in 1903 with Richard H. Gerard...

, published in 1905 by M. Witmark & Sons

M. Witmark & Sons

M. Witmark & Sons was a leading publisher of sheet music for the United States "Tin Pan Alley" music industry.The firm of Marcus Witmark & Sons was established in New York City in 1886...

 of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. The original sheet music is scored in B-flat major for voice and piano and marked andante moderato.

It was taken up in 1907 by the British music hall

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 singer Gertie Gitana

Gertie Gitana

Gertie Gitana , was a British music hall entertainer.She was born Gertrude Mary Astbury in Shirley Street, Longport, Stoke-on-Trent. Her father was a pottery works foreman and her mother Lavinia taught at St Peter's RC school in Cobridge...

, becoming her most famous song.
It subsequently became popular in the UK as a pub song

Pub song

In English popular culture, the "traditional" pub songs typified by the Cockney "knees up" mostly come from the classics of the music hall, along with numbers from film, the stage and other forms of popular music....

, particularly the chorus (There's an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean…), which was often sung by itself. A book published in 1977 claimed that "The song most often sung in pubs during the present century must surely be Nellie Dean."

Armstrong also performed the song himself. In 1945, when he was 66, Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

magazine reported he "picked up an extra hand from the British seamen with his throating of 'Nellie Dean'" during a show in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 put on by the entertainment unit of the Songwriters' Protective Association.

Ellen (Nelly) Dean is the main narrator of the Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...

's novel Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...

, but its plot bears no apparent relation to the lyrics of this song.

Early recordings

Early recordings of the song omit the second verse, which would have made the duration of the song too long for early sound recording media.

The song was recorded by vocal duo Byron G. Harlan

Byron G. Harlan

Byron G. Harlan was an American singer from Kansas, a comic minstrel singer and balladeer who often recorded with Arthur Collins. The two together were often billed as "Collins & Harlan".-Solo recordings:1899...

 (tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

) and Frank C. Stanley

Frank C. Stanley

Frank C. Stanley was a bass-baritone singer, stage performer and banjoist who made many early gramophone recordings on disc and cylinder during the 1890s and the 1900s. His real name was William Stanley Grinsted. He was born on 29 December 1868 in Orange, New Jersey...

 (baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

) with orchestral accompaniment in 1905 on Edison

Edison Records

Edison Records was one of the earliest record labels which pioneered recorded sound and was an important player in the early recording industry.- Early phonographs before commercial mass produced records :...

 Gold Moulded phonograph cylinder

Phonograph cylinder

Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

.

Gertie Gitana recorded the song in 1911 on the Jumbo label and again in 1931 for EB Radio.

The Columbia Quartet made a recording in January 1913 on Columbia Records.
The song was also recorded by the Columbia Stellar Quartette in December 1919 and released by the Columbia Graphophone Company

Columbia Graphophone Company

The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...

 as a 10-inch 78 rpm gramophone record in 1920.