Every Rose Is Bonny In Time- (Ulster) 1910 Houston
[Published in 1910 by C. M. Cox in the Journal Of The Irish Folk Song Society (Vol. 8, p. 17-8). Kloss' notes follow.
R. Matteson 2018]
This is a surprisingly complete text. Even Miss Nell had survived the trip to Ireland. Interestingly here the refrain is not the list of herbs but instead the one with the rose that is known from the Scottish variant collected by the Rev. Findlay in the 1860s but also from all early versions of the type IIa.
"Every Rose Is Bonny In Time" collected by Maud Houston (d. 1905) in Coleraine, Ulster, published in Cox 1910, p. 17-8.
As I went over Bonny Moor Hill,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
I met a wee lass and they Ca’ed her Nell;
She was longing to be a sweet lover of mine.
It’s questions three I’ll ask of thee,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
And it’s questions three you must answer me,
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must get unto me a cambric shirt,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
Without one stitch of your needlework
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must wash it in yonder well,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
Where water ne’er wet and rain never fell.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must bleach it on yonder green,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
Where flowers ne’er blossomed nor grass seen.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must dry it on yonder thorn springs,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
Where it ne’er budded since Adam was born.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
It is questions three you have asked of me,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
And it’s questions three you must answer me.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must get unto me an acre of land,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
Betwixt the salt sea and the sea water strand.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must plough it with Adam’s horn,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
And then sow it over with one hub of corn.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must shear it with one peacock’s feather,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
And then bind it up in the song of another.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
You must stock it on yonder sea,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
And bring the shell sheaf dry unto me.
Before you’re a sweet lover of mine.
It is when you have done and finished your work,
Every rose grows bonny in time.
You may call unto me for your cambric shirt
A then I will be a sweet lover of thine.