I Will Give My Love an Apple- Burrows 1906
From: Miscellaneous Songs
by Lucy E. Broadwood, Frank Kidson, A. G. Gilchrist, H. E. D. Hammond, Cecil J.Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 3, No. 11 (1907), pp. 109-136
I WILL GIVE MY LOVE AN APPLE- Burrows 1906
Tune noted by H. E. D. Hammond. SUNG BY MR. J. BURROWS, AT SHERBORNE, JULY, 1906.
AEOLIAN.
I will give my love an apple without e'er a core
I will give my love a house without e'er a door,
I will give my love a palace wherein she may be,
But she may unlock it without e'er a key.
My head is the apple without e'er a core,
My mind is the house without e'er a door.
My heart is the palace wherein she may be
And she may unlock it without e'er a key.
I will give my love a cherry without e'er a stone,
I will give my love a chick without e'er a bone,
I will give my love a ring, not a rent to be seen,
I will give my love children without any crying.
When the cherry's in blossom, there's never no stone,
When the chick's in the womb, there's never no bone.
*And, when the ring is running, not a rent's to be seen,
And, when they're love-making, they're seldom crying.
* (originally) And, when they're rinning running [the ring is running?], not a rent's to be seen,
And, when they're [love-making], they're seldom crying.
The first two verses of this song are charming, and I have not met with them before. The 'ring' paradox is puzzling. Does it mean a metal ring with the two ends not welded together-the join being invisible when the ring is "running round"? Or should 'ring' be 'gown' or 'riband'-any rent being unseen if only the wearer or the observer is running fast enough? There is an old saying, used to console people when some defect in costume is being pointed out-" A man running for his life would never see it! "
The tune has some resemblance to that of "' Glenlogie " in Songs of the North. It is, however, a better melody.- A. G. G.
This tune has probably a Celtic origin. It is like a tune noted in County Antrim by Mrs. Milligan Fox (1904), from the singing of a native of County Down, (Journal of the Irish Folk-Song Society, Vol. i, No. 2, p. 58.) And the foregoing is much like an air in three-four time which I noted this year from an old Gaelic singer in Inverness-shire, who cannot read even his own language, and knows no English. He sings it to the bard Ross' poem "1B rughaichean Ghlinn'-Braon," and I have not been able to trace his tune in any published collection. Ross' words are popular to quite a different tune, and one which my singer knows, but does not care for. Child quotes a song from a MS. assigned to the fifteenth century (see Wright's Songs ald Carols, and Sloane MS., No. 2593, British Museum), which begins "I have a yong suster fer beyondyn the se." This contains the familiar verse "I will give my love a cherry," etc, but with points of likeness that I have only met with in this ancient song and the third verse of this Dorsetshire version. See " Captain Wedderburn's Courtship," Child's Ballads, Vol. i, 4I5.- L. E. B.