Songs of the West: Folk Songs of Devon & Cornwall Collected from the Mouths of the PeopleBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
General
Songs of the West: Folk Songs of Devon & Cornwall Collected from the Mouths of the People
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Ballads, English; Folk songs, English
103. I'LL BUILD MYSELF A GALLANT SHIP. The words are a cento from
a long ballad. The complete song was taken down from J. Watts,
quarryman, Thrushleton. The entire ballad is in Logan's "Pedlar's
Pack," p. 23. There are several Broadside versions. A Scottish
version in Herd, "Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs," 1776, ii. p.
2. The air to which this is sung in Scotland is that to which Burns
composed "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw." Joyce gives an Irish
version in his "Ancient Irish Music," No. 68. Besides Watts' ballad,
we had the fragment we give to the same air from Richard Cleave,
since dead, at the "Forest Inn," Huckaby Bridge. Never shall I forget
the occasion. Mr. Bussell and I drove across Dartmoor in winter in
a furious gale of wind and rain to Huckaby in quest of an old man
who, we had been informed, was a singer. We found the fellow, but he
yielded nothing, and our long journey would have been fruitless, had
we not caught Richard Cleave and obtained from him this air, which
drive cost me a bronchitis attack that held me a prisoner for six
weeks.
The song is given under the title "The Lowlands of Holland," in the
_Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 97, as taken down in Sussex.
104. COLLY MY COW. This is a portion of an old ballad in the Roxburgh
Collection, ed. Chappell, iii. p. 601--
"Little Tom Dogget, what doest thou mean,
To kill thy poor Colly now she's so lean?
Sing oh! poor Colly, Colly my cow;
For Colly will give me no more milk now.
Pruh high, pruh hoe, pruh high, pruh hoe,
Pruh, pruh, pruh, pruh, pruh, pruh, pruh, tal-dal daw."
Printed by T. Passinger (1670-86) at the Seven Stars on London
Bridge. The ballad is also found in the Rawlinson Collection and
elsewhere. It was afterwards sung in a shortened form at the concerts
in Marylebone Gardens, and is printed in "The Marylebone Concert,"
N.D.
In the heading to the old ballad we have--
"A country swain of little wit, one day
Did kill his cow, because she went astray."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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