Trees They Do Grow High- Bob Copper (Sus) c.1952
[From: VT131CD; a Veteran CD When the May is all in Bloom, 1995; www.veteran.co.uk/VT131CD.htm
This version's source is questionable since it seems like an arrangement, however, Seamus Ennis recorded at least one version and surely knew others.
Liner notes follow,
R. Matteson 2016]
This ballad which is often called Young but Growing or The Bonny Boy is found throughout England, Scotland and Ireland yet Child missed it from his collection. Burns actually used the theme of the ballad in his Lady Mary Ann. In England Cecil Sharp collected twelve versions and it was a popular broadside printed by Such (amongst others) and it turns up in just about every folk song collection. Bob [Copper] learned this version from Seamus Ennis while they were working together for the BBC in the 1950s.
A.L. Lloyd suggests in 'Folk Song in England' that, "early folk song enthusiasts loved the sport of tracing ballad stories to some literal historical source and Young but Growing was thought to reflect the marriage between the juvenile Lord of Craigton and a girl some years his senior in 1631". In 'The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs' he says that this is "one of the most curious, most beautiful, and most widespread of British ballads, which may be much older" and that "child marriages for the consolidation of family fortunes were not unusual in the Middle Ages and in some parts the custom persisted far into the seventeenth century."
The Trees They Do Grow High- sung by Bob Copper of Peacehaven, Sussex, learned from Seamus Ennis cicra 1952. Song transcribed by Dan Quinn.
Oh, the trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green,
The time has long since passed, my love, that you and I have seen.
‘Tis a cold and wintry night, my love, you and I must lie alone
For my bonny boy is young but he’s growing.
“Oh, father, dearest father, you’ve done to me great harm.
You’ve married me to a bonny boy and you know he’s far too young.”
“Oh daughter, dearest daughter, just you bide along with me
And a lady you shall be while he’s growing.
We will send him to the college just for a year or two
And by that time perhaps, my dear, he’ll become a man for you.
We’ll buy for him white ribbons all to tie round his bonny waist,
So the ladies will all know that he’s married.”
Oh, she went down to the college and she gazed over the wall,
Saw four and twenty young gentlemen, they were playing bat and ball.
She asked if she might speak with him, but they would not let him come,
Saying “The bonny boy is young, but he’s growing.”
Oh, so early in the morning, before the break of day,
They went down to the playing fields all for to sport and play.
What game it was they played out there, oh she never did declare,
But she never more complained of his growing.
Oh, at the age of fourteen years, he was a married man
And at the age of fifteen years, he’s the father of a son
And at the age of sixteen years, the grass on his grave did grow,
For death had put an end to his growing.
Oh, I’ll make my love a shroud of the Holland oh so brown
And every stitch I put in it, the tears come trickling down.
I’ll sit and mourn your fate, my love, oh until the day I die
But I’ll watch o’er your son while he’s growing.
And now my love is dead and in his grave does lie.
The green grass that grows over him, Oh it grows so very high.
Oh, once I had my own true love, but now I’ve ne’er a one,
But his bonny boy is young and he’s growing.