
Scroll down to see what happens when a song becomes larger-than-life-popular:
Here’s another one:
“Sweet Caroline” written and performed by Neil Diamond was released in May, 1969. Though folklore has it that Caroline Kennedy inspired the song, Diamond has said that the song was really about his then-wife Marcia Murphey; The song really needed a three-syllable name to fit the melody, and since “Caroline” fit the bill, Sweet Caroline was born.
We’re not sure when the song went viral the way it did, but it wasn’t when the song came out. It reached Number 4 on Billboard but no further, and it was over 50 years before the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (it happened in 2020). So what changed?
Certainly a Hyundai commercial in 2017 helped:
So did a Jim Beam ad that aired more recently in 2023:
For tragic reasons, however, the song was widely heard back in 2013 following the Boston Marathon Bombing. That year, Neil Diamond performed the song live at Fenway Park after the bombing, and the song became a symbol of Boston’s resilience. For obvious reasons, the Boston Red Sox adopted the song which has been played at every Red Sox home game ever since.
We’ve led you down this path to emphasize that not only do some songs simply become massively popular, but certain songs achieved sensational status long before the advent of television, radio, and social media. And that brings us to John Peel and any connection to the Lakeland Terrier.
Back in 1806, thirty-year old John Peel lived on a small farm at Ruthwaite, Cumbria, England. A renowned huntsman, Peel kept a pack of foxhounds with whom he hunted in the relatively flat country “back of Skiddaw.” Author Bryan Cummins writes in his book, The Terriers of England and Wales, that Peel was the Cumbrian Master of Foxhounds, and that he also kept working terriers, but in our cursory research, connecting Peel with the Lakeland Terrier is tenuous. One source maintains that the only connections between man and breed is that Peel hunted in the region where the Lakeland Terrier would later develop, and that the terriers Peel used likely contributed to the gene pool from which the Lakeland Terrier would eventually emerge. Formal standardization of the Lakeland as a distinct breed happened long after Peel’s death in 1854. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1912 that the breed’s current name, Lakeland Terrier, was even chosen for the breed, and by then, Peel had been dead for over 50 years. Still, there are sources that allude to his having kept them.
It’s puzzling, then, that the man became associated with the breed
After a bit of research, one might conclude that Peel’s real claim to fame was as the subject of a song that was the “Sweet Caroline” of its day. The song, D’ye Ken John Peel,” was as good as the Cumbrian national anthem. Though the song was not put to sheet music until 1870, the melody based on a traditional Scottish tune, “Bonnie Annie,” was song in local pubs, at hunt meets, ad even became the regimental marching tune of the Border Regiment. It’s still played!
As the story goes, the song was written by Peel’s chum, Woodcock Graves, as the pair sat in what we imagine was the kitchen area of the house. Completed before they called it a night, Graves, it is said, told Peel that the tune would be “sung when we’re both run to earth.”
D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?
D’ye ken John Peel at the break o’ day?
D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far a-way.
With his hounds and his horn in the morning?
For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,
And the cry of his hounds which he oft time led,
Peel’s “View, Halloo!” could awaken the dead,
Or the fox from his lair in the morning.
Yes I ken John Peel and Ruby too
Ranter and Royal and Bellman as true,*
From the drag to the chase, from the chase to the view
From a view to the death in the morning
And I’ve followed John Peel both often and far,
O’er the rasper fence and the gate and the bar,
From low Denton Holme up to Scratchmere Scar,
Where we vie for the brush in the morning
For the sound of his horn, etc.
*Ranter and Royal and Bellman were said to be the real names of Peel’s hounds, dogs he said in his later years were the very best he ever had or saw.
One might notice that the ditty about a hunt doesn’t mention terriers, but, Brian Plummer, author of The Fell Terrier, mentioned that without terriers at the end of a fox hunt, the work of hounds would be meaningless since it was the terriers who bolted the fox. The presence of the hounds, then, implies the presence of terriers.
Before we conclude, one more factoid about the popularity of the song. In 1939, Austen Croom-Johnson and Alan Bradley Kent created a jingle for Pepsi-Cola, “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot” based on the melody of “D’ye Ken John Peel.” By 1941, it had reportedly aired 296,426 times on 469 radio stations, a full version later orchestrated and recorded for use in jukeboxes.
Image: Lakeland Terrier by zelenka68