The Trees They Do Grow High- Walter Pardon (Nor) 1974
[From- Walter Pardon: A World Without Horses TSCD514. Liner note excerpts follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
In 1974, a tape of his singing was received by the singer Peter Bellamy and this led to him being recognised as an outstanding singer of remarkable style and repertory. He was subsequently recorded extensively for a number of LPs on the Leader, Topic and Home Made Music labels.
Walter William Pardon lived all his life in the redbrick farm workers' cottage where he was born on 4th March 1914, in the village of Knapton, Norfolk. His parents were Thomas Pardon (1877-1957) and Emily, née Gee (1874-1953). All the male members of his family, on both sides, had been farm workers of one kind or another for as far back as anyone could remember, so young Walter was unusual in that he was apprenticed at fourteen to a carpenter in the village of Paston, and spent all his working life as a carpenter, interrupted by four years in the army (again as a carpenter, at Aldershot) during the Second World War.
The Trees They Do Grow High- sung by Walter Pardon of Knapton, Norfolk in 1974.
The trees they do grow high
The leaves they do grow green
Time is long past love[1], you and I have seen
It's a cold winter's night When you and I must bide alone
Oh my bonny lad is young, he's a-growing, growing,
Oh my bonny lad is young, he's a-growing.
Oh father, dear father, you done me much wrong
You've married me to a boy who I fear is too young,
Oh daughter, dear daughter, if you stay at home with me,
A lady you shall be while he's growing, growing,
A lady you shall be while he's growing.
We'll send him to college for a year or two,
Perhaps then, my love, into a man he will grow
I'll buy you white ribbons to tie round his bonny waist,
So the ladies shall know that he's married, married,
So the ladies shall know that he's married.
At the age of sixteen he was a married man
At seventeen, the father of a son,
At the age of eighteen, love, his grave was a-growing green
So she saw the end to his growing, growing,
So she saw the end to his growing.
I've made my love a shroud of holland oh so fine
At every stitch I put in it, the tears come trickling down
And I'll mourn his fate until the day I shall die
But I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing, growing
But I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing.
Now my love is dead- in his grave does lie,
The grass [sowed o'er him] oh it grows so high[2]
I had a sweetheart but now I've got never a one,
[Fare ye well] my true love for growing, growing--
1. Pardon quickly starts over here- it seemed to be unintentional
2. I'm unsure of text in brackets