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Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer, do.
I'm half crazy
All for the love of you!
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 Most
of you will know those words and their tune. Perhaps like me you thought
this popular music-hall ditty was called Daisy, Daisy. Well, the
correct title is Daisy Bell (lyrics and music by Harry Dacre).
Actually, the above words are just the chorus (or rather the first half
thereof), for there are three verses as well, but these days few people
will have heard them.
It would seem
that the whole song may be legally sung in public without fee or
licence, except in music halls!
And there was a
real Daisy who inspired the song — the Countess of Warwick, Frances
Brooke, one of the most desirable women of those times, and one of the
wealthiest. Daisy was her nickname. For a while she was the mistress of
the Prince of Wales (subsequently Edward VII), and they say that he once
gave her an ankle bracelet inscribed "Heaven’s Above".
This beautiful
socialite actually dared turn socialist, but whether that fact impinged
on her later money troubles, when she tried selling her Prince's letters
to his son George V, I can’t say.
In the end, she
was bought off by John Boyd Dunlop, the founder of the rubber company,
who got a baronetcy in exchange.
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