There's An Alehouse- Hannah Collins (Cam) 1886 Bull
[MS from Lucy Broadwood Manuscript Collection (LEB/5/79/1). A reference to this MS appears in English Dance and Song below. See also Hannah Collins Version 2 of eight stanzas.
R. Matteson 2017]
Lucy Broadwood then wrote to Ella Bull and in the reply, dated 20 December 1904, Ella sent some extra verses of several songs including 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale' which 'have lately come to my knowledge', suggesting that she had some extra verses of several songs. . . [English Dance and Song, Volumes 68-69]
There's An Alehouse- from Ella Bull who it learned from Hannah Collins a domestic servant native of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire in 1886 and sent to Lucy Broadwood in December 20, 1904.
1. There is an alehouse in the town
Where my true love [goes and] sits himself down,
And takes another girl all on his knee-
And don't you think it's a grief to me?
2. A grief to me, I'll tell you why,
Because she's got more gold than I;
But her money will waste and her beauty will pass[1] (blast),
Poor girl she'll be like me at last.
3. (Oh when my apron it did tie low,
He'd followed me over the frost and snow;
But now that my apron is up to my chin,
He'll pass by my door and not look in.)
4. There is a bird on yonder tree[2],
They say he is blind and cannot see,
I wish that had been the case with me,
Ere I had known love's misery (agony).
5 There is a man on yonder hill[2],
He has a heart as hard as steel,[3]
He has two hearts instead of one,
And one of them is like iron and stone.
1. the text in (brackets) supplied by the contributor Ella Bull perhaps indicating changes from Collins original.
2. originally "stream"
3. that line is missing