2d ed.); and Mason’s Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (p. 67). Halliwell (Nursery Rhymes and Tales, p. 96) quotes a version of the words. The same theme is dramatized in the Singing Game, “There stands a Lady” (Children’s Singing Games, Set 3, Novello & Co.).
The tune, which is in the Æolian mode, is remarkable in that it is practically constructed upon the first five notes of the scale—the sixth is but once used, and then only as an auxiliary note.
No. 67. My Man John
This is obviously but an extension of the preceding song in which a third character is introduced. I have taken down four other versions, one of which is printed in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, p. 88). Mr. Baring-Gould gives the words of yet another variant in his note to “Blue Muslin” (Songs of the West, p. 8, 2d ed.), where he also points out that muslin was introduced into England in 1670, and that mous-e-line is the old form of the word.
No. 68. O No, John!
I have collected several versions of this song. The first stanza is identical with the initial verse of the Singing Game, “Lady on the Mountain” (Dictionary of British Folk-Lore, volume i, pp. 320–324). Lady Gomme shrewdly guesses that the game was derived from a ballad, and Mr. Newell, in his Games and Songs of American Children (p. 55), prints a version which he also believes to be “an old English song, which has been taken for a ring-game.” See also “The Disdainful Lady,” in Miss Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore (p. 561); and “Twenty, Eighteen,” in English County Songs (p. 90).
The main theme of the song—the daughter’s promise to her father to answer “No” to all her suitors during his absence—is not in any of the songs above mentioned. The idea, however, is carried out in “No, Sir!” which the late Miss A. M. Wakefield made very popular some years ago. Miss Wakefield wrote to me: “I first heard something like it from an American governess. Neither words nor music were at all complete. …I wrote it down and it got a good deal altered and I never looked upon it at all as a folk-song,” and added that her song was now sung by the Salvation Army, under the title “Yes, Lord!” The song is, of course, closely allied to the two preceding songs. The tune is a variant of the “Billy Taylor” tune (see No. 71). The Shropshire version and the one in English County Songs are Dorian and Æolian (?) variants of the same air. The first two stanzas of the text are exactly as they were sung to me; the rest of the lines were coarse and needed considerable revision.
No. 69. The Brisk Young Bachelor
The troubles of married life, from either the husband’s or the wife’s point of view, form the subject of many folksongs. One of the best and oldest examples is “A woman’s work is never done,” reproduced in Ashton’s Century of Ballads (p. 20). I have collected several songs that harp on the same theme, two of which are printed respectively in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume v, p. 65), and Folk-Songs from Various Counties (No. 10).
The tune, which is in the Dorian mode, is a fine example of the rollicking folk-air. As the singer’s words were incomplete, I have supplemented them with lines from my other versions.
No. 70. Ruggleton’s Daughter of Iero
This song, of which I have only collected one variant, is a version of a very ancient ballad, the history of which may be traced in Child’s English and Scottish Ballads (No. 227), and in Miss Gilchrist’s note to “The Wee Cooper of Fife,” in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, pp. 223, 224). In some versions the husband is deterred from beating his wife through fear of her “gentle kin.” To evade this difficulty he kills one of his own wethers, strips off its skin, and lays it on her back, saying:
I dare na thump you, for your proud kin,
But well sall I lay to my ain wether’s skin.
(See “Sweet Robin,” in Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, volume i, p. 319.)
