4. THE TREES THEY ARE SO HIGH. Words and melody taken down in 1888 first from James Parsons, then from Matthew Baker. Again in 1891 from Richard Broad, aged 71, of Herodsfoot, near S. Keyne, Cornwall. Again, the words, to a different air, from Roger Hannaford. Another version from William Aggett, a paralysed labourer of 70 years, at Chagford. Mr. Sharp has also obtained it in Somersetshire. A fragment was sung at the Folk-Song Competition at Frome in April 1904. Mr. Kidson has noted a version in Yorkshire, Miss Broadwood another in Surrey, see _Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 214. Apparently there exist two distinct variants of the ballad, each to its proper melody. Johnson, in his "Museum," professed to give a Scottish version-- "O Lady Mary Ann looks owre the Castle wa', She saw three bonny boys playing at the ba', The youngest he was the flower among them a'; My bonny laddie's young, but he's growing yet." But of his version only three of the stanzas are genuine, and they are inverted; the rest are a modern composition. A more genuine Scottish form is in Maidment's "North Country Garland," Edinburgh, 1874; but there the young man is fictitiously converted into a Laird of Craigstoun. It begins-- "Father, said she, you have done me wrong, For ye have married me on a childe young man, And my bonny love is long Agrowing, growing, deary, Growing, growing, said the bonny maid." But the most genuine form is on an Aberdeen Broadside, B.M., 1871, f. This, the real Scottish ballad, has verses not in the English, and the English ballad has a verse or two not in the Scottish. I have received an Irish version as sung in Co. Tipperary; it is in six verses, but that about the "Trees so High" is lacking. The rhyme is more correct than that of any of the printed versions, and the lines run in triplets. One verse is-- "O Father, dear Father, I'll tell you what we'll do, We'll send him off to college for another year or two, And we'll tie round his college cap a ribbon of the blue, To let the maidens know he is married." In one of the versions I have taken down (Hannaford's and Aggett's) there were traces of the triplet very distinct, and the tune was akin to the Irish melody sent me, as sung by Mary O'Bryan, Cahir, Tipperary. Portions of the ballad have been forced into that of "The Cruel Mother" in Motherwell's MS., Child's "British and Scottish Ballads," i. p. 223. In this a mother gives birth to three sons at once and murders them; but after they are murdered-- "She lookit over her father's wa', And saw three bonnie boys playing at the ba'." Our melody is in the Phrygian mode, a scale which is extremely scarce in English folk-song. The only other example we know is in Ducoudray's book of the "Folk Melodies of Brittany."