The Squire of Edenborough Town- (MA) pre1892 Child
[From: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Part 7 - p. 218 by Francis James Child, George Lyman Kittredge - 1892. Child includes this US version in his narrative (head notes) as follows.
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
A copy from the recitation of a young Irishwoman living in Taunton, Massachusetts (learned from print, I suppose, and in parts imperfectly remembered), puts the scene of the story at Edenborough town. A squire of high degree had courted a comely country girl. When her father came to hear of this, he was an angry man, and "requested of his daughter dear to suit his company," or to match within her degree. The only son of a farmer in the east had courted this girl until he thought he had won her, and had got the consent of her father and mother. The girl writes the squire a letter to tell him that she is to be married to the farmer's son. He writes in answer that she must dress in green at her wedding (a color which no Scots girl would wear, for ill luck), and he will wear a suit of the same, and wed her 'in spite of all that's there.' He mounts eight squire-men on milk-white steeds, and rides 'to the wedding-house, with the company dressed in green.' (See the note to L.)
'O welcome you, fair welcome!
And where have you spent all day?
Or did you see those gentlemen
That rode along this way?'
He looked at her and scoffed at her,
He smiled and this did say,
'They might have been some fairy troops,
That rode along this way.'
She fills him a glass of new port wine, which he drinks to all the company, saying, Happy is the man that is called the groom, but another may love her as well as he and take her from his side.
Up spoke the intended groom,
And an angry man was he,
Saying, If it is to fight that you came here,
I am the man for thee.
'It is not to fight that I came here,
But friendship for to show;
So give me one kiss from your lovely bride,
And away from you I'll go.'
He took her by the waist so small,
And by the grass-green sleeve;
He took her out of the wedding-house,
Of the company asked no leave.
The drums did beat and the trumpets sound,
Most glorious to be seen,
And then away to Edenborough town,
With the company dressed in green.