Trees They Do Grow High- Ginger Clayton (Camb) 1907 V. Williams
[From: Ralph Vaughan Williams Manuscript Collection (at British Library) (RVW2/1/42).
At some point I'll put the two manuscript pages on so anyone may try and decipher Williams scribbling. In another cleaned up version of the stanzas- Lucy Broadwood Manuscript Collection (LEB/5/384)- the original text has been edited some- but it's legible :)
R. Matteson 2016]
The Trees They Do Grow High- Sung by Elles 'Ginger' Clayton, of Meldreth, Cambridgeshire on 22 July, 1907; Collector: Vaughan Williams, Ralph
1, The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green,
The days are past and gone which you and I have seen,
For it's one cold winter's night, my love that you must lay alone,
While your bonny lad is young but is growing.
2. O father, dearest father to me you have done wrong,
You've married me to a boy and I fear he is too young.
"Hold your tongue, daughter dear, some grand lady you might be,
While your bonny lad is young but is growing.
3. "Now we'll send him to college for another year or two,
Perhaps only that time will do for you,
Now we'll buy a bit of white ribbon for to tie around his bonny waist,
For to let the ladies know he's got married."
4. Now at the age of sixteen he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen she brought forth to him a son,
At the age of eighteen his grave was growing green,
And that surely put an end to his growing.
5. Now we'll buy him a shroud the best of linen so fine
And while that is a-making, the tears came trinklin' down[1]
Oh once I had a true love but now I've ne'er a one,
So fare you well, my bonny lad, forever.
original MS, Broadwood's new text is "the tears they will run down."