My Bonny Lad Is Young- Mr. Ash (Som) 1905
[Fragment from (Various Songs) by Frank Kidson, Cecil J. Sharp, Lucy E. Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 2, No. 7 (1905), pp. 70-104. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes follow. A date of 1900? was given.
The same fragment is in Henry Hammond Manuscript Collection (HAM/2/1/10) with minor changes but dated May, 1905. Clearly, Hammond should have been mentioned.
R. Matteson 2016]
This singular ballad appears apparently for the first time in print with music, in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1792), under the title "Lady Mary Ann." The major tune there given (which has no likeness whatever to this Devonshire air, is said to have been picked up, with the words, by Robert Burns in the Highlands. The name of the boy in his version is "Young Charlie Cochran." In A North Countrie Garland, edited by James Maidment, originally published in 1824, is printed a copy of the poem called "The young Laird of Craigs Toun," with a note appended, giving historical details as to an early marriage of the young laird with a lady, the laird dying shortly afterwards, in 1634. It may be pointed out that the fact of a forced early marriage in a Scottish family may be merely a coincidence, and it does not sufficiently establish a claim to have originated the ballad. Its widely-spread popularity in the South of England, without mention of the boy's name, rather indicates the prevalence of early betrothals and marriages of convenience in the Middle Ages and later. I have noted a version in the West Riding of Yorkshire.- F. K.
Miss Bidder's tune is most interesting, for, as far as I know, with the exception of a different tune in Songs of the West to these words, it is an unique specimen of the Phrygian mode in English folk-song. "Gil Morice," however, No. 22 in this volume, has Phrygian characteristics.- R. V. W.
For other tunes, versions of words and copious notes, see Folk-Sono Journal, No. 4, p. 214, and No. 6, p. 44, Smith's Scotish- Minstrel (" Lady Mary Ann"), Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs ("Young Craigston"), in addition to the other works mentioned in the foregoing notes. Tunes two and three should be compared with those collected by the Rev. S. Baring Gould and Mr. Cecil Sharp, as they are allied with both.- L. E. B
My Bonny Lad Is Young- Sung by Mr. Amos Ash Tune noted by H. A. Feboult, of Taunton, at Somerset, 1900.
1. Oh, the trees they grow so high, and the leaves they grow so green,
The day is past and gone, my love, that you and I have seen,
It's a cold winter's night, my love, when you and I must bide alone,
And my bonny lad is young, and is growing[1].
2. . . . .
. . . .
It was my heart's delight to see him the best amongst you all[2],
For my bonny lad is young and is growing.
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footnote:
1. Hammond has another- "and is growing" at the end of the stanza.
2. This stanza begins similarly:
She went to the college and looked over the wall,
She saw four-and-twenty gentlemen playing there at ball;