Bluegrass Messengers

Still Growing- Jack Barnard (Som) 1908 Sharp E

[From: Cecil Sharp Manuscript Collection (at Clare College, Cambridge) first stanza (CJS2/10/1751) and three stanzas; out-of -order (CJS2/9/1576).

R. Matteson 2016]


Still Growing- Sung by Jack Barnard of Bridgwater, Somerset on 3 August, 1908; Sharp E

The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green,
The time is gone and past my love that you and I have seen,
It's a cold winter's night, my love, when you and I must bide alone,
The bonny lad was young but a-growing.

I will go to college for a year or two
And perhaps all in time my love that I may do for you
Take a bunch of blue ribbons for to trim your bonny bonny bonnet
For to let the ladies know you been married.

At the age of sixteen he was a married man
At the age of seventeen I gave him a son
At the age of eighteen his grave it did grow green
and it soon put an end to his growing

I'll make my love a shroud of hadelin O so green
And all the time I'm making it the tears come trinklin' down
O once I had a sweetheart for now I have got neither one
So fare you well my bonny boy forever.