Still Growing- Kathleen Williams (Glos) 1921 Sharp
[Cecil Sharp Manuscript Collection (at Clare College, Cambridge) (CJS2/9/3341), text from an online PDF.
R. Matteson 2016]
Still Growing- Collected by Cecil Sharp from Mrs Kathleen Williams, Puddlebrook near Drybrook, September 9, 1921
1.O father O father you have done me some wrong,
You have made me get married to a young man, and you know I am too young,
O it’s daughter, dearest daughter, if you’ll only wait a while,
O a lady you shall be when he’s done growing.
2. I went unto the college and I peep-ed over the wall,
I saw four and twenty young gentlemen, they was playing at bat and ball
I inquired for my own true love but they would not let him come
All because he was a young man a-growing.
3.Now the age of seventeen O he was a married man
And the age of eighteen he was the father of a son,
At the age of nineteen of age he was a-laying low (OR he was a dead man)
And the green grass was a-growing all over him.
4. At the age of twenty-one, O me and my son
We came into a large salary what the father he had won (OR the father’d left for me).
We have to weep for the father because he’s laying low
And the green grass growing over him.
My father said: Dearest daughter, it’s no good to weep.
O, a lady you would have been if your husband had finished growing.