But A-Growing: village-woman (Devon) 1905 Bertha Bidder
[Fragment from (Various Songs) by Frank Kidson, Cecil J. Sharp, Lucy E. Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 2, No. 7 (1905), pp. 70-104. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
This singular ballad appears apparently for the first time in print with music, in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1792), under the title "Lady Mary Ann." The major tune there given (which has no likeness whatever to this Devonshire air, is said to have been picked up, with the words, by Robert Burns in the Highlands. The name of the boy in his version is "Young Charlie Cochran." In A North Countrie Garland, edited by James Maidment, originally published in 1824, is printed a copy of the poem called "The young Laird of Craigs Toun," with a note appended, giving historical details as to an early marriage of the young laird with a lady, the laird dying shortly afterwards, in 1634. It may be pointed out that the fact of a forced early marriage in a Scottish family may be merely a coincidence, and it does not sufficiently establish a claim to have originated the ballad. Its widely-spread popularity in the South of England, without mention of the boy's name, rather indicates the prevalence of early betrothals and marriages of convenience in the Middle Ages and later. I have noted a version in the West Riding of Yorkshire.- F. K.
Miss Bidder's tune is most interesting, for, as far as I know, with the exception of a different tune in Songs of the West to these words, it is an unique specimen of the Phrygian mode in English folk-song. "Gil Morice," however, No. 22 in this volume, has Phrygian characteristics.- R. V. W.
For other tunes, versions of words and copious notes, see Folk-Sono Journal, No. 4, p. 214, and No. 6, p. 44, Smith's Scotish- Minstrel (" Lady Mary Ann"), Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs ("Young Craigston"), in addition to the other works mentioned in the foregoing notes. Tunes two and three should be compared with those collected by the Rev. S. Baring Gould and Mr. Cecil Sharp, as they are allied with both.- L. E. B
THE TREES THEY DO GROW HIGH- SUNG BY A VILLAGE-WOMAN OF STOKE FLEMING. Tune noted by Bertha Bidder, of Stoke House, Stoke Fleming, Devon.
As I was a walking by yonder church[1] wall,
I saw four and twenty young men a playing at the ball;
I asked for my own true love,
But they would not let him come,
For they said the boy was young,
But a-growing.
1. usually "college"