Lang A-Growing: Liam Clancy (Tip) 1959 Live REC
[From a 1959 Boston Clancy Brothers concert with Liam performing solo (Bonny Boy); also live Irish Troubadour (Lang A-Growing) by Liam Clancy, 1965. I'm not sure of Liam's traditional source or when he learned the ballad, but the first extant recording of him was made of a 1959 solo performance in Boston. It was also in the repertoire of sister Peg Clancy who recorded "The Bonny Boy" in 1962 (the texts are significantly different). Liam used Ewan MacColl's title in 1965 while his sister (also Peg Power) called it The Bonny Boy, the usual Irish title. Liam was born in 1935 and died in 2009, the youngest of the Clancy Brothers. Bob Dylan was influenced by Liam's version which Dylan acknowledged in a 1961 performance. Cf. Seán 'ac Dhonncha
R. Matteson 2016]
Lang A-Growing- sung by Liam Clancy of County Tipperay, Ireland solo with some guitar on Irish Troubadour, 1965.
Oh the trees they are high, and the grass is growing green,
And many's the day and night have passed that I alone have been.
It is a cruel and bitter night that I must lie alone,
For my bonnie lad is lang, lang a-growing.
Oh Father dearest Father, you have done what's very wrong,
You have married me to a bonnie lad but I feel he is too young.
For he is only fifteen years and I am twenty-one,
He's a bonnie lad but Lang, Lang a Growing.
Oh daughter dearest daughter, I have done you no wrong.
For I have wedded you to a noble lord's son.
And he will be a man for you when I am dead and gone,
He's a bonnie lad but lang, lang a-growing.
Oh father dearest father, I'll tell you what we'll do,
we'll send my love to College for another year or two.
And all around his college cap we'll bind a ribbon blue
For to let the ladies know that he's married.
A year it went by and I passed the College wall,
And there I saw the college boys and they all playing ball.
I spied him in amongst them, the fairest of them all,
He's a bonnie lad but lang, lang a-growing.
At the age of fifteen years, he was a married man,
At the age of sixteen years he was the father of a son.
At the age of seventeen o'er his grave the grass grew green,
Cruel death had put an end to his growing.
I'll buy my love a shroud of the ornamental brown,
And while they are making it, the tears they will run down.
It's once I had a true love but now he's lying low,
But I'll watch his bonnie son while he's growing.