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
No. 27 THE BONNY BUNCH OF ROSES
H.F.S.
[Music]
1
Beside the rolling ocean
One morning in the month of June,
The feathered warbling songsters
Were sweetly changing note and tune.
I overheard a damsel fair
Complain in words of bitter woe,
With tear on cheek, she thus did speak,
O for the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!
2
Then up and spake her lover
And grasped the maiden by the hand,
Have patience, fairest, patience!
A legion I will soon command.
I'll raise ten thousand soldiers brave
Thro' pain and peril I will go
A branch will break, for thy sweet sake,
A branch of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!
3
Then sadly said his mother,
As tough as truest heart of oak,
That stem that bears the roses,
And is not easy bent or broke
Thy father he essayed it first
And now in France his head lies low;
For sharpest thorn, is ever borne
O by the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!
4
He raised a mighty army
And many nobles joined his throng
With pipe and banner flying
To pluck the rose, he march'd along:
The stem he found was far too tough
And piercing sharp, the thorn, I trow.
No blossom he rent from the tree
All of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!
5
O mother, dearest mother!
I lie upon my dying bed,
And like my gallant father
Must hide an uncrowned, humbled head.
Let none henceforth essay to touch
That rose so red, or full of woe,
With bleeding hand he'll fly the Land
The land of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!
No. 28 THE LAST OF THE SINGERS
C.J.S.
[Music]
1
I reckon the days is departed,
When folks 'ud a listened to me,
And I feels like as one broken-hearted,
A-thinking o' what used to be.
And I don't know as much be amended,
Than was in them merry old Times,
When, wi' pipes and good ale, folks attended,
To me and my purty old rhymes,
CHORUS: To me and my purty old rhymes.
2
'Tis true, I be cruel asthmatic
I've lost every tooth i' my head;
And my limbs be that crim'd wi' rheumatic
D'rsay I were better in bed.
Oh my! all the world be for reading
Newspapers, and books and what not;
Sure--'tis only conceitedness breeding,
And the old singing man is forgot.
CHORUS: And the old singing man is forgot.
3
I reckon that wi' my brown fiddle
I'd go from this cottage to that;
All the youngsters 'ud dance in the middle,
Their pulses and feet, pit-a-pat.
I cu'd zing, if you'd stand me the liquor,
All the night, and 'ud never give o'er
My voice--I don't deny it getting thicker,
But never exhausting my store.
CHORUS: But never exhausting my store.
4
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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