My Bonny Boy Is Young- Joe Heaney (Carna) 1964 MacColl
[From a recording by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1964, released on is Topic CD, The Road from Connemara (TSCD518D), 2000. The text is from the recording by Susan Auerbach in 1982, listen: http://www.joeheaney.org/default.asp?contentID=1081
Carna is the district of south Connemara where Irish (Gaelic) singer Joe Heaney grew up. He spent some time in Dublin and traveled all over the UK. I do not know Joe's source for his version. The first stanza begins after her love has died- a fairly common beginning, which I like. I also like it to repeat at the end. Several minor changes occur in the 1982 recording which is the text I've used. Only two of them appear in my footnotes.
R. Matteson 2016]
My Bonny Boy Is Young - Sung by Joe Heaney text from an 1882 recording with two changes (see footnotes) from a recording session at Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's home in Beckenham in 1964.
The trees they grow tall, the leaves[1] they grow green
The time has come and passed my love, since you and I have been,
It’s a cold and bitter night my love, that I lie here alone
My bonnie boy was young, but he’s gone.
Oh father dearest father, you done to me what’s wrong
When you married me to my bonnie boy, whose age it was so young
For he was scarce sixteen years, and I was twenty-one
My bonnie boy was young and growing.
Oh daughter dearest daughter, I did to you no wrong
When I married you to your bonnie boy, I knew he[2] was too young
For he would prove to be a man to you when I was dead and gone
Your bonnie boy was young and growing.
But daughter dearest daughter, I’ll tell you what I’ll do
I’ll send your love to college for another year or two
And whilst he is in college, he’ll wear a ribbon blue
So the girls will all know that he’s married.
As I was walking down by the college wall
I spied four-and-twenty college boys all playing with their ball,
It’s there I spied my own true love, the fairest of them all
My bonnie boy was young and growing.
And at the age of sixteen he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen the father of a son
At the age of eighteen years, 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 oriental brown
And whilst I sit and sew it, so my tears they will roll down
I will weep and I will mourn him until the day I die
But I’ll rear his bonnie son, while he’s growing.
1. grass, 1964
2. his age, 1964