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PENGUIN CLASSICS
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published by Allen lane 2012
This edition published in Penguin Classics 2014
Selection, introductions and additional material copyright © Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, 2012
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-96432-4
General Introduction: Steve Roud
Introduction to the Music: Julia Bishop
Note on Editing and Transcription
The Songs
I ’Tis True My Love’s Enlisted …
Soldiers and Sailors
1. The Bold Princess Royal
2. Bonny Bunch of Roses O
3. Captain Ward and the Rainbow
4. The Dolphin
5. Faithful Sailor Boy
6. The Female Cabin Boy
7. The Female Drummer
8. General Wolfe
9. The Golden Vanity
10. The Green Bed
11. The Greenland Whale Fishery
12. The Isle of France
13. The Mermaid
14. Nancy of Yarmouth
15. The Rainbow
16. Rambling Sailor
17. The Saucy Sailor Boy
18. The Silk Merchant’s Daughter
19. Spanish Ladies
20. The White Cockade
II Down in Cupid’s Garden …
Happy Relationships
21. Bold Fisherman
22. Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy
23. Cupid’s Garden
24.The Game of Cards
25. The Garden Gate
26. Golden Glove
27. Green Mossy Banks of the Lea
28. Hares on the Mountains
29. The Indian Lass
30. Just as the Tide was a-Flowing
31. The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter
32. Little Gipsy Girl
33. Lord Bateman
34. Madam, Will You Walk?
35. Queen of the May
36. Searching for Lambs
37. Seventeen Come Sunday
38. The Spotted Cow
III Let No Man Steal Your Thyme …
Unhappy Love
39. Banks of Sweet Primroses
40. Barbara Allen
41. Bonny Light Horseman
42. A Brisk Young Sailor
43. Early, Early All in the Spring
44. The Foggy Dew
45. Green Bushes
46. Green Grow the Laurels
47. If I Were a Blackbird
48. Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor
49. Mowing the Barley
50. An Old Man Once Courted Me
51. Rosemary Lane
52. The Seeds of Love
53. The Sprig of Thyme
54. Susan, the Pride of Kildare
55. The Trees They Do Grow High
56. A Week Before Easter
IV Since Love Can Enter an Iron Door …
Lovers’ Tricks, Disguises and Obstacles Overcome
57. The Baffled Knight
58. The Banks of the Sweet Dundee
59. Basket of Eggs
60. The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bethnal Green
61. The Bonny Blue Handkerchief
62. Bonny Labouring Boy
63. Broomfield Hill
64. Butter and Cheese and All
65. Caroline and Her Young Sailor Bold
66. Claudy Banks
67. Dabbling in the Dew
68. Dark-Eyed Sailor
69. The Daughter in the Dungeon
70. Erin’s Lovely Home
71. Fair Maid Walking in Her Garden
72. Polly Oliver’s Rambles
73. The Pretty Ploughboy
74. William and Mary
75. William Taylor
V My Parents Reared Me Tenderly …
Lust, Infidelity and Bad Living
76. The Ball of Yarn
77. Bold Grenadier
78. The Cunning Cobbler
79. The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife
80. Flash Company
81. The Gipsy Laddie
82. Marrowbones
83. The Molecatcher
84. The Nutting Girl
85. Our Goodman
86. Spencer the Rover
87. Three Maidens to Milking Did Go
88. The Wild Rover
89. Young Ramble Away
90. Young Sailor Cut Down
VI I Can Guide a Plough …
Rural Life and Occupations
91. All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough
92. The Barley Mow
93. Buttercup Joe
94. The Farmer’s Boy
95. Fathom the Bowl
96. Green Brooms
97. John Barleycorn
98. The Jolly Waggoner
99. The Lark in the Morning
100. The Miller’s Three Sons
101. The Painful Plough
102. Twankydillo
VII The Sons of Harmony …
Animals and Nonsense
103. Bryan O’Lynn
104. The Crabfish
105. Creeping Jane
106. The Derby Ram
107. The Foolish Boy
108. The Frog and the Mouse
109. The Herring’s Head
110. The Hungry Fox
111. The Keeper
112. Old King Cole
113. Three Sons of Rogues
114. The Tree in the Wood
VIII Cruel Death Has Put an End …
Songs of Death and Destruction
115. The Constant Farmer’s Son
116. The Cruel Mother
117. The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter
118. Edwin in the Lowlands Low
119. Hugh of Lincoln
120. The Lakes of Cold Finn
121. Lambkin
122. Lord Lovel
123. Maria Marten
124. Mary Across the Wild Moor
125. Mary in the Silvery Tide
126. The Mistletoe Bough
127. The Outlandish Knight
128. Oxford City
129. The Oxford Girl
130. The Unquiet Grave
IX Me and Five More …
Poachers, Highwaymen and Other Criminals
131. Blackberry Fold
132. Brennan on the Moor
133. Dick Turpin
134. The Female Highwayman
135. The Gallant Poachers
136. Geordie
137. Highwayman Outwitted
138. The Lincolnshire Poacher
139. The Lost Lady Found
140. The Poor Smuggler’s Boy
141. The Sheffield Apprentice
142. Thorneymoor Woods
143. Three Butchers
144. The Undaunted Female
145. Van Diemen’s Land
146. Wild and Wicked Youth
X What Is the Life of a Man …
Traditional Religious Songs
147. The Cherry-Tree Carol
148. The Joys of Mary
149. The Life of a Man
150. The Moon Shines Bright
151. A Virgin Unspotted
Notes to the Songs
Bibliography
Discography
Acknowledgements
PENGUIN CLASSICS
STEVE ROUD is the Founder of the Roud Folk Song Index and the author of a number of major works on English folkways and customs, including The English Year.
JULIA BISHOP has a PhD in folksong and is Chief Editor of the forthcoming edition of the James Madison Carpenter Folksong Collection.
Shortlisted for the Katherine Briggs Award 2013.
To Kate, Mark, Jacqueline and Stephanie
To Robin and the girls, who have held the fort so valiantly
during the preparation of this book