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All
Alone and Lonely (Child 20)
I’ve been singing this ballad for some years, albeit in a different version – that collected from Mrs. Bigney of Pictou, Nova Scotia - for most of them. Over the years I made minor revisions and added extra verses, although the Pictou text remains the foundation for what I sing now. Verse 2 belongs to that text - although I tweaked it to make it rhyme – and the “owl in the wood” came from there, too. The penances in v14, however, are from Peter Cole, recorded in Pennsylvania U.S.A. in 1929, while the attempts to clean knife and hands were in a version sung by Mrs. Hollingsworth of Thaxted, England in 1921. Mrs. Hollingsworth had the song collected from her on two occasions separated by ten years, and it’s interesting to note that her tune varied significantly between the two. A couple of years ago I came across a version of the ballad printed in The Living Tradition magazine that had a Mixolydian melody I rather liked and an interesting five-beat bar on the third line of the verse, although the lyrics were brief and sketchy. So Mrs. Woodbury’s tune (notated by Cecil Sharp) became the vehicle for the set of words I’d already put together over the years. Calling it All Alone and Lonely – which is far less judgemental than Child’s preferred Cruel Mother and begins to suggest the desperation of the single mother in an age when such a situation carried a far greater stigma than today (read your Tess of the D’Urbervilles) – was Chris Coe’s suggestion. The singers who sang the ballad in tradition more commonly called it The Greenwood Side or similar. |
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1. There
was a lady lived in York All alone and lonely She fell in love with her father’s clerk Down by the greenwood side |
2. She
loved him well, she loved him long She grew with child as the year drew on |
3. She
leaned her back against an oak First it bowed and then it broke |
4.
She leaned her back against a thorn And there her two bonny babes were born |
5. She
took a penknife, long and sharp She pierced it through their tender hearts |
6.
She dug a hole, both wide and deep She threw them in and bid them sleep |
7.She
wiped the knife all on the grass The more she wiped, the blood ran fast |
8.
She washed her hands all in the spring Thought to return a maid again |
| 9. But as she
returned to her father’s hall |
10. Oh babes, oh
babes, if you were mine I’d dress you up in the silk so fine |
| 11. Oh mother dear,
we once were thine But you didn’t dress us in the silk so fine |
12. For you took
a penknife long and sharp You pierced it through our tender hearts |
| 13. Oh babes,
oh babes, what must I do |
14. It’s seven
years to wash and wring Seven years to card and spin |
| 15. Seven years as
an owl in the wood Seven years as a fish in the flood |
16. And seven years
to toll the bell Seven years in the flames of Hell |