The Trees are Growing Tall- Pat Kelly (Down) 1953
[From: Some 'English' Ballads and Folk Songs Recorded in Ireland 1952-1954; Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1956), pp. 16-28. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
PAT KELLY- Age 78. Until he retired to Newry was farming at Mullabawn, S. Armagh. Parents both singers, spoke Irish. Found by collectors singing in a bus shelter.
THE TREES ARE GROWING TALL- Sung by Pat Kelly, Newry, Co. Down on 31st July, 1953. Recorded by Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle.
1. O the trees are growing tall and the leaves are getting green,
And many's the pleasant hour my love and I have seen,
But it's a cold winters night when I have to lay my love.
He's my bairney boy he's young and he's growing.
2. "O father, dear father I fear you have done wrong,
You have married me to a bairney boy I fear he is too young
For his age is scarce sixteen now an' mine is twenty-one
He's my bairney boy he's young and he's growing."
3. "O daughter, dear daughter I'll tell you what I'll do
I shall send him off to college for another year or two,
And round his Scotch bonnet I shall pin a ribbon blue,
Just to let the ladies know that he's married."
4. As I went a-walking down by the college wall
I spied four and twenty college men just playing at a ball.
I spied my own Scotch laddie he being the finest of them all.
He's my bairney boy, he's young and he's growing.
5. I bought my love a shirt[1] and it being linen fine,
And all the time I was making it I could not help but cry,
For the more I gazed upon it the more it grieved my mind.
He's my bairney boy he's young and he's growing.
6. At the age of sixteen, oh, he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen he was daddy o'er his son
And at the age of eighteen o'er his grave the grass grew green
Cruel I death put an end (spoken in low register) to his growing.
1. usually "shroud"-- this stanza should appear at the end.