Hurkle-durkle: a 200 year-old Scottish term meaning to lounge in bed long after it’s time to get up.

The following is an Edwardian gramophone recording “sung,” and I use the term most loosely, by Agatha Pettigrew of Engleford Green.

Mrs. Pettigrew lived her adult life under the impression her voice was an “utter delight.” William, her husband, was utterly tone deaf, which goes a long way to explain how both this misapprehension and their marriage was able to continue for so long.

Agatha Pettigrew was the very epitome of a social climber, and having successfully married far above herself, she spent the rest of her life permanently, desperately terrified of being found out. She lacked the musical education that was the birthright of the class into which she had married and tragically also lacked the natural musical ability to know that it mattered.

Mrs. Agatha Pettigrew’s most earnest wish was to be invited over the threshold of Chalfont House. The closest she ever got was to watch the smouldering embers of the dining hall from outside after the Baron’s home was bombed by the suffragettes.

She had no friends in the village of Engleford Green. Brigette O’Malley was the only one to live in a house large enough to meet her approval, and Bridgette O’Malley had no time for the likes of Mrs. Agatha Pettigrew.

These are the only lyrics we have on record for the Two Cat Hurkle Durkle.

If anybody knows of any other verses we would be delighted to hear about them.

Can you do the two cat Hurkle-Durkle?
When one cat Hurks does the other Durk as well?
Oh, tell me that you do the two cat Hurkle-Durkle
because the two cat Hurkle-Durkle’s mighty swell.
I hear in Fife they do the one cat Hurkle-Durkle.
In Fife I hear that that’s all that they do.
Well, it’s a shame the way they do the Hurkle-Durkle.
Because the Hurkle-Durkle’s better done with two.