Trees they do Grow High- David Stacey (Essex) 1973
[From David Stacey's recording Good Luck to the Journeyman (MTCD360). The date is derived from: the cassettes he’d recorded in the 1970s of Gypsy, Traveller and local Essex and Kent singers. Liner notes follow,
R. Matteson 2016]
David Stacey was born and brought up in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1943. From his twenties he spent many years alternating between archaeology in Israel and apple and hop picking in Kent. There he met Mary Ann Haynes' son Ted, and Nelson Ridley's nephew Henry - and through them, many other Gypsies and Travellers in the area. He was privy to many of the sing-songs they participated in, and learned a good number of their songs.
Back home, in later life, he encountered a number of other Travellers in north Essex and Cambridgeshire, and a local traditional singer, Walter Jarvis - learning more songs on the way - in addition to the repertoire he'd acquired from books and records.
The Trees they do Grow High- from David Stacey's recording "Good Luck to the Journeyman" (MTCD360). David learned this one from Joe Dolan, his sometime tent-mate.
The trees they do grow high
And the leaves they do grow green
And many’s the long and winter’s night
My love and I have seen.
It’s a cold winter’s night, my love,
You and I must lie alone
For my bonny boy is young but he’s growing.
“Now Father, dear Father,
You’ve done to me great wrong
For you’ve gone and got me married
To one who is too young
For he is only sixteen years and I am twenty one,
Oh my bonny boy he’s young but he’s a-growing.”
“Oh Daughter, dear Daughter,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do
We’ll send your love to college
For another year or two
And all around his college scarf
We’ll tie the ribbons blue
For to let the ladies know that he’s a-married.”
Now so early, so early, so early the next day
This couple they arose and went sporting in the hay
And what they did there she never would declare
But she never more complained of his a-growing.
Now at the age of sixteen he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen the father of a son
But at the age of eighteen years growth
Grew over his tombstone;
Cruel death had put an end to his a-growing.
So now my love is ended and in his grave do lie
I’ll sit here and mourn his death until the day I die
And I’ll sit here and mourn his death
Until the day I die
And I’ll watch all o’er his son
Whilst he’s a-growing.