Page:One Hundred English Folksongs (1916).djvu/32

 A zucks th’ smael birds’ eggs, To make his voice clear; And the mwore a cries “cuckoo!” The zummer draws near. The words in the text are similar to those given in a Glasgow Garland, “The Sailor's Return.”

No. 36. Blackbirds and Thrushes

I have collected five variants of this song, I do not know of any published version of it. I have had to amend some of the lines that were corrupt.

No. 37. The Drowned Lover

other versions with tunes, see Traditional Tunes (p. 112); Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iii, p. 258); and Songs of the West (No. 32, 2d ed.). In a note to the latter, Mr. Baring-Gould states that the earliest copy of the words is in the Roxburghe Ballads, under the heading “Captain Digby’s Farewell;” and that the song afterward came to be applied—at any rate, in the West of England—to the death of the Earl of Sandwich after the action in Sole Bay in 1673. Mr. Baring-Gould suggests that “Stokes Bay,” in the version given in the text, is a corruption of “Sole Bay.” In both the other versions above cited, and in another one which I have published (Folk Songs from Various Counties, No. 8), the scene is laid in the North of England, the lovers being buried in Robin Hood’s Churchyard.

The air is in the Dorian mode. The words are almost exactly as they were sung to me.

No. 38. The Sign of the Bonny Blue Bell

subject of the ballad is clearly related to “I’m going to be married on Sunday,” in Dr. Joyce’s Ancient Irish Music (No. 17); while the first three lines of the initial stanza are identical with the corresponding lines of another song in the same volume (No. 72). The words are printed on a broadside by Williamson, Newcastle (circa 1850), and two short verses are given by Halliwell in his Nursery Rhymes (p. 94).

A country-dance air, which, however, has nothing in common with the tune in the text, is printed by Walsh (1708), and in The Dancing Master (volume ii, ed. 1719), under the heading “I mun be marry’d a Tuesday.”

The tune in the text is in the Æolian mode.

No. 39. O Waly, Waly

collected five variants of this song. The words are so closely allied to the well-known Scottish ballad, “Waly, Waly, up the bank” (Orpheus Caledonius), that I have published them under the same title. A close variant is to be found in Songs of the West (No. 86, 2d ed.) under the heading “A Ship came Sailing.” Mr. Baring-Gould, in a note to the latter, points out that the third stanza is in “The Distressed Virgin,” a ballad by Martin Parker, printed by J.Coles, 1646–74.

The traditional “Waly, Waly” is part of a long ballad, “Lord Jamie Douglas,” printed in the appendix to Motherwell’s Minstrelsy. Its origin seems very obscure. The tune ts given in Rimbault’s Musical Illustrations of Percy’s Reliques (p. 102); in Chambers’s Scottish Songs prior to Burns (p. 280); and elsewhere.

No. 40. Green Bushes

versions with tunes may be seen in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume v, p. 177); Songs of the West (No. 43, 2d ed.); English County Songs (p. 170); and Traditional Tunes (p. 47). Two stanzas of this song were sung in Buckstone’s play, “The Green Bushes” (1845), and, owing to the popularity which this achieved, the complete song was shortly afterward published as a “popular Irish ballad sung by Mrs. FitzWilliam.” There are several Irish variants of this tune in the Petrie Collection (Nos. 222, 223, 368, 603, etc.), but none of these are downright Mixolydian tunes like the one in the text, which is the form in which the air is usually sung in England. Miss Broadwood and Miss Gilchrist, in notes appended to the version published in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, consider that the words have been affected by those of a “Dialogue in imitation of Mr. H. Purcell—Between a Town