The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs

Contents

General Introduction: Steve Roud

Introduction to the Music: Julia Bishop

Note on Editing and Transcription

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

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

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

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

Acknowledgements