Long Time a-Growing: Bridget Furey (Dub) c.1965
[From Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More - Page 104, 2007, MacWeeney.
Notes from the book preview follow,
R. Matteson 2016]
In 1965, Alen MacWeeney came upon an encampment of itinerants in a waste ground by the Cherry Orchard Fever Hospital outside Dublin. Then called tinkers and later formally styled Travellers by the Irish Government, they were living in beatup caravans, ramshackle sheds, and time-worn tents.
Track 3: Long Time a-Growing- sung by Bridget Furey, near Dublin
Oh, the trees they are growing high, my love, and the grass it is growing green,
The days and nights is gone, my love, where me and you used be,
Oh, this is a cold and a stormy night for I to lie all alone,
Oh, my bonny boy, he's young, but he's growing."
"Oh father, dear father I'm afraid you have done me wrong,
To marry me to a bonny boy I'm afraid he is too young,
His age is scarcely sixteen, and mine is twenty-one,
Oh, my bonny boy, he's young, but he's growing."
"Oh, daughter, dear daughter, I'll tell you what you'll do,
You'll send your love to college for another year or two.
And all around your silvery hat, you'll wear a band of blue
For to let the ladies know you are married."
For at the age of sixteen, he was a married man,
And at the age of seventeen, the father of a son,
And at the age of twenty-one, the the grass grew over him tall,
And cruel death it put an end to my love's growing.