True Love He Once Courted Me- Halliday (York) 1891 Kidson A
[From Traditional Tunes: Volume 7, edited by Frank Kidson, 1891. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
MY TRUE LOVE ONCE HE COURTED ME. the following song, the plaint of a broken-hearted girl, I have been enabled to obtain four different tunes, all set to separate verses, but I have found great difficulty in getting the entire ballad complete. I at last obtained it from Mr. Halliday, of Newtondale, in North Yorkshire, along with the first air here presented.
MY TRUE LOVE ONCE HE COURTED ME- sung by Robert Halliday, of Newtondale, in North Yorkshire, before 1891.
[music]
My true love once he courted me,
And stole away my liberty;
He stole my heart with my free good will,
I must confess I love him still.
There is an alehouse in this town,
Where my love goes and sits him down;
He takes another girl on his knee—
O! isn’t that a grief to me.
A grief to me, I'll tell you why—
Because she has more gold than I;
Her gold will waste, her beauty blast,
Poor girl, she'll come like me at last.
O, once I [had no cause for woe],
My love followed me through frost and snow;
But [ah! the changes time doth bring]—
My love passes by and he says nothing.
I wish my baby it was born,
Set smiling on its nurse's knee;
And I myself was in my grave,
And the green grass growing over me.
I wish, I wish, but it's all in vain,
I wish I were [but free again;
But free again I’ll never be],
Till an apple grows on an orange tree.
There is a bird in yon churchyard,
They say it's blind and cannot see;
I wish it had been the same with me,
Ere I joined my true love's company.