"(You're My Heart's Desire, I Love You) Nellie Dean" is a

sentimental ballad A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner.J. M. C ...

common time The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...

by Henry W. Armstrong, published in 1905 by M. Witmark & Sons of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The original sheet music is scored in

B-flat major B-flat major is a major scale based on B, with pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative minor is G minor and its parallel minor is B-flat minor. The B-flat major scale is: : Many transposing instr ...

for voice and piano and marked '' andante moderato''. It was taken up in 1907 by the British

music hall Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...

singer

Gertie Gitana Gertie Gitana (born Gertrude Mary Astbury; 27 December 1887 – 5 January 1957) was an English music hall entertainer. Biography She was born in Shirley Street, Longport, Staffordshire, Longport, Stoke-on-Trent.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. The tradition is continued in t ...

, 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 A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

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

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

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

Ellen (Nelly) Dean Ellen "Nelly" Dean is a female character in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel ''Wuthering Heights.'' She is the main narrator in the book, and she provides eyewitness accounts of many of the story's central events to Mr Lockwood. Ellen Dean is called ...

is the main narrator of

Emily Brontë Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ''Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poet ...

's novel ''

Wuthering Heights ''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moorland, moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their tur ...

'', 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 Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

media. The song was recorded by vocal duo

Byron G. Harlan Byron George Harlan (August 29, 1861 – September 11, 1936) 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 rec ...

(

tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

) and Frank C. Stanley (

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

) with orchestral accompaniment in 1905 on Edison Gold Moulded

phonograph cylinder Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1916), these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engra ...

. 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 Co. Ltd. was one of the earliest phonograph, gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Columbia Records, Columbia Phonograph Company, it became an independent British-owned ...

as a 10-inch 78 rpm gramophone record in 1920."Nellie Dean". Columbia Stellar Quartet
The Virtual Gramophone,

Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is th ...

. Accessed 2009-07-30.

References

{{authority control Songs about fictional female characters Ballads Music hall songs 1905 songs Songs written by Henry W. Armstrong