The College Boy- Lizzie Higgins (Scot) 1958 Paton; 1969 Hall; 1973 Kennedy
[From: Sandy Paton, 1958 also Musical Traditions Records' first CD release of 2006: Lizzie Higgins 1929-1993: In Memory of (MTCD337-8). First on Princess of the Thistle; 1969 and a later live version is Lizzie Higgins singing The College Boy at the Blairgowrie Folk Festival in between 1986 and 1995.
Lizzie Higgins, born in 1929, she was a traveller who lived in Aberdeenshire. One online source says learned this ballad in the 1940s from her father, Donald 'Donty' Higgins, a piper of great repute (her mother was the great ballad singer, Jeannie Robertson). On the 1958 recording her source is named but it's too hard to hear: [ ] McAllister.
This version was published in Sing Out - Volume 14 - Page 28; 1964 also in Alias MacAlias: Writings on Songs, Folk and Literature - Page 122 by Hamish Henderson, ‎Alec Finlay - 2004 and in School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1962 In these publications it says Lizzie had learned the ballad "in the tattie-fields of Angus."
According to Sandy Paton, I recorded Lizzie in 1958 in Aberdeen." His version is nearly identical to the 1973 version- both appear below.
R. Matteson 2016]
Liner notes: Roud shows this is widely known, with 171 entries from right across the Anglophone world, but with the majority from England. It is most usually titled The Trees they do Grow High, but examples along the lines of Long a-Growing are also very frequent. Clearly its popularity endured until recently, since about one third of his entries are sound recordings.
Versions still available on CD include: George Dunn - Musical Traditions MTCD317-8 Chainmaker; Mary Ann Haynes - Musical Traditions MTCD320 Here's Luck to a Man; Fred Jordan - Veteran VTD148CD A Shropshire Lad; Joe Heaney - Topic TSCD 518D The Road from Connemara; Harry Cox - Rounder CD1839 What Will Become of England; Duncan Williamson - Kyloe 101 Travellers' Tales 2; and Walter pardon - Topic TSCD514 A World Without Horses.
Mary Ellen Brown considers there are two main subsets of this song - The Trees they do Grow High and The Bonny Boy is Lang a -Growin. Although the sad tale of such failed arranged marriages was universal, Aberdeenshire claims it firmly for the marriage and death three years later of the young Laird of Craigston in 1634, as attested by James Maidment in A North Country Garland (1824). Nevertheless, Greig and Duncan only found four versions (and a Lady Mary Ann variant). Although Child did bring in lines from Lady Mary Ann when discussing The Cruel Mother, he did not think fit to include it amongst his 305 ballads, (leading the late David Buchan to maintain it should really have been known as 'Child 306'). For a thorough consideration of this song, see Mary Ellen Brown Lewis's account in Philological Quarterly 52 (1973). Lizzie learned the song in her teens from her father.
My Bonny Boy- Sung by Lizzie Higgins; recorded by Sandy Paton in 1958; learned from McAllister.
Oh father, dear father, pray what is this you've done?
You have wed me to a college boy, a boy is far too young
For he is only sixteen years and I am twenty-one,
He's my bonny bonny boy and he's growing
As we were going through college when some boys were playing ball
When there I saw my own true love, the fairest of them all
When there I saw my own true love, the fairest of them all
He's my bonny bonny boy and he's growing
For at the age of sixteen years he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen the father of a son
But at the age of twenty-one he did become a man
But the green grass o'er his grave it was growing
I will buy my love some flannel, I will make my love's shroud
With every stitch I put in it, the tears will fall down
With every stitch I put in it, the tears will fall down
And that put an end to his growing.
The College Boy - Sung by Lizzie Higgins. Recorded by Peter Hall at the Aberdeen Folk Festival, 1973.
Oh father, dear father,
Pray what is this ye've done?
You have wed me to a college boy[1],
A boy that's far too young,
For he is only sixteen years[2]
And I am twenty-one;
He's ma bonny, bonny boy
And he's growin.
As we were going through college
When some boys were playin' ball,
When there I saw my own true love,
The fairest of them all,
When there I saw my own true love,
The fairest of them all;
He's ma bonny, bonny boy
And he's growin.
At the age of sixteen years,
He was a married man,
And at the age of seventeen,
The father of a son;
Oh, and at the age of twenty-one
He did become a man,
So the green grass o'er his grave
It was growin.
I will buy my love some flannel,
And I'll make my love a shroud.
With every stitch I put in it,
The tears will flow down,
With every stitch I put in it,
The tears will flow down,
For cruel fate put an end to his growin.
1. Alexander Brodie (b. 1617) was about fourteen when enrolled in King's College in 1631. He also attended 1632 and 1633 and possibly part of 1634 (although his diary mentions only 1632 and 1633). Brodie went to school in England when he was just 10 in about 1627. According to Anderson Alumni p. 11, he was admitted to King's College in 1631, contradicting his diary. He came home to Scotland for his father's funeral in 1632 and returned to college. Although he was a "college boy" he never finished college!
2. Surprisingly these are almost exactly the ages of Alexander Brodie (about seventeen, b. 1617) and Elizabeth Innes (about twenty-two, b. 1613) when they were married.