My Bonnie Laddie's Young- Mrs. Bowker (Lanc) 1909
[Fragment from: Songs of Love and Country Life by Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, Frank Kidson, Clive Carey and A. G. Gilchrist; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 5, No. 19 (Jun., 1915), pp. 174-203. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
Notes by Broadwood:
This is one of the most favourite ballads amongst country singers. It is curious that Child has not included it in his English and Scottish Ballads, although in his notes on the " Cruel Mother" he quotes a line or two from the curtailed version called " Lady Mary Ann " in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. For full references and distinct airs as well as variants of the tune in this Journal, see Journal, Vol. i, P. 2I4; and Vol. ii, pp. 44, 95, 206, 274. The harmonized airs in Songs of the West, Songs from Somerset, and English Traditional Songs and Carols are all distinct and none have any likeness to the earliest book-version which is in the Musical Museum. To the previous references for texts should be added the broadside " My bonny Laddie's young," beginning " The trees they are high," (seven verses, B.M., I871, 8, I3), which is much the same as the version noted by me in Surrey. Cf. Mrs. Joiner's air with the Somerset variants in Journal, Vol. ii, pp. 44 and 96, and the Yorkshire variant, p. 274. So far as I am aware, the latter is the only example which has any phrase at all like Mrs. Joiner's chorus. Her version and that of Mr. Harry Richards (noted by Mr. Cecil Sharp) probably represent the norm of the most favourite tune amongst several other fine airs sung to the ballad. Versions two and three in this Journal, noted by Miss Gilchrist on the Lancashire coast, are-more or less-major variants of version one. They approximate oddly to the tune of "The Basket of Oysters," which is greatly affected of sailors, who by preference use it also for "The Golden Vanity." The norm, therefore, may be said to have "suffered some sea-change" in this case!- L. E. B.
The singers of the second and third versions both live now on the Lune estuary, but Mr. Whitehead brought his song from Tunstall, near Kirkby-Lonsdale, in Wesmorland, and Mrs. Bowker hers from Ingleton, just over the Yorkshire border. Neither singer remembered more than fragments of the words.-A. G. G.
My Bonnie Laddie's Young- Sung by Mrs. Bowker of Sunderland Point, Lancashire, 1909. Noted by A. G. Gilchrist.
Oh, the trees they are so high and the leaves they are so green,
The days are past and gone, love, that you and I have seen;
It's a cold winter night, you and I must bide alone,
For my bonny laddie's young but he's growing.