What on earth is the status of this? ...

[Mike001]

I happened to hear a traditional sea-song sung recently: In Plymouth Town There Lived a Maid.

Now I can remember this at school in a children's songbook of traditional folksongs — only it turns out this song can be rather less polite than was thought suitable for children's ears. Like many traditional songs, it seems to exist in multiple versions. I also found the first line as "In Amsterdam …" and "In Portsmouth Town …"

Googling around I find this:

Link

That's a bit bluer than we sang at school. (It also looks like that book — does that mean all its contents? — is in copyright.) They certainly didn't have us singing, in our tender trebles,

We only had one night, and yet
She gave me something I won't forget

Our songbook version used the old second person singular forms, too: "I'll go no more a roving with thee, fair maid …"


Someone at the University Bath has something similar up:

http://people.bath.ac.uk/su3bugs/songs/song/aroving.htm

But goodness knows what the status of that is. And whether the University of Bath even knows that's there and what the copyright on that text is ...


There's also a version that refers to a Nancy Dawson that turns up across the English-speaking world, including on U.S. and Australian sites. For example, it's in the University of Toronto songbook, which presumably is PD:

http://archive.org/stream/universityoftoro00martuoft/universityoftoro00martuoft_djvu.txt

Roger McGuinn has a download where he sings a version. He has some interesting material on it — it turns out that the extant versions go back to something by Lord Byron ... although he based it on a traditional Scottish song called The Jolly Beggar.

http://www.reveries.com/folkden/a_roving.html


Kind of interesting. And I suppose it would be nice to read, or even sing, traditional songs like this. I might even have a go myself, if I could (a) get the microphone steady and (b) practice a suitable seafaring voice.

But I suppose that even a very old song, if it exists in multiple versions, could only be acceptable in a version known to be in the public domain.

[Peter Why]

I remember being taught in my primary school, a song with the chorus "Oh, no, John, no, John, no." The first verse was something like "On yonder hill there stands a maiden, who she is, I do not know, I will ask her if she'd wed me, will she answer yes or no" ...

And a line of similar verses. We were never taught the last verse at school, which I found out later was "Madam, may I tie your garter, tie it just above your knee? If my hand should slip a little higher, would you think it amiss of me?"

Peter

[carolb]

I sang that in school too - also without the final verse! Wasn't it a BBC Radio for Schools singing class, with the little books to go with it?
... Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill! Hmm, I wonder which song is going to play in my head all day!

[RuthieG]

I remember all these. One of my favourites was Sweet Polly Oliver, found here as Pretty Polly Oliver with the tune that I know.

This book has The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies, Oh! and many others which you may remember.

The Daily Express Community Songbook of 1927 has a lot of copyright acknowledgements for copyrighted songs, but there is none for A'roving (In Plymouth Town There Lived a Maid), so I am guessing that it was already out of copyright by then. Edward Thomas quoted it (with the alternative location of Amsterdam) in his poem An Old Song here.

Hugill, in Shanties of the Seven Seas, notes that some people claim that the words were taken from a song in the 1640 play The Rape of Lucrece, but he is not convinced of this having compared them (this from Wikipedia).

Cecil Sharp, Sabine Baring-Gould and Ralph Vaughan-Williams were ardent collectors and preservers of English folk songs. The two former are out of copyright for us British, but not Vaughan-Williams, though many of his books are PD in the US.

But, back to the case in hand: A'Roving appears in these books:

C. H. Farnsworth and C. J. Sharp Folk-songs, chanteys and singing games
H. G. Cartwright Song Treasury 1920
C. J. Sharp English Folk-chanteys 1914 https://archive.org/stream/englishfolkchant00shar#page/28/mode/1up

Here is a very useful book: Song index; an index to more than 12000 songs in 177 song collections, comprising 262 volumes http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015034714280

I should very much like to do a folk-song collection one day.

Ruth

[RuthieG]

The version of Oh, No, John! collected by Cecil Sharp may be found here. And yes, I remember it well .

Ruth

[annise]

That is the version we learnt - and I taught my children . After they grew out of doggies stealing sausages and the grand old Duke of York when we were driving to visit Grandma

Anne

[Mike001]

I remember all these. One of my favourites was Sweet Polly Oliver, found here as Pretty Polly Oliver with the tune that I know.

I recall Peter Pears singing it, presumably in a Britten setting.

This book has The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies, Oh! and many others which you may remember.

I certainly remember the Wraggle Taggle Gypsies. One sang high, and the other sang low, and another sang Bonny Bonny Biscay O !

The Daily Express Community Songbook of 1927 has a lot of copyright acknowledgements for copyrighted songs, but there is none for A'roving (In Plymouth Town There Lived a Maid), so I am guessing that it was already out of copyright by then. Edward Thomas quoted it (with the alternative location of Amsterdam) in his poem An Old Song here.

Hugill, in Shanties of the Seven Seas, notes that some people claim that the words were taken from a song in the 1640 play The Rape of Lucrece, but he is not convinced of this having compared them (this from Wikipedia).

Cecil Sharp, Sabine Baring-Gould and Ralph Vaughan-Williams were ardent collectors and preservers of English folk songs. The two former are out of copyright for us British, but not Vaughan-Williams, though many of his books are PD in the US.

There was a kind of turn back to folk forms of music around that time, wasn't there? I suppose this would probably ultimately have intellectual roots in the German Romantic movement and its response to the "Universalism" of French Enlightenment thought. (C.f. Grimm collections of tales, too?) The Weltseele (Napoleon) gets a bit worrying when he's riding into Jena. And there's the sheer sense that with the rise of industrial society the culture of the people — the folk — their songs, dances, and tunes could simply get lost.

Didn't Janáček try to do something similar to what Vaughan-Williams etc were doing for Czechoslovakia?

But, back to the case in hand: A'Roving appears in these books:

C. H. Farnsworth and C. J. Sharp Folk-songs, chanteys and singing games
H. G. Cartwright Song Treasury 1920
C. J. Sharp English Folk-chanteys 1914 https://archive.org/stream/englishfolkchant00shar#page/28/mode/1up

Here is a very useful book: Song index; an index to more than 12000 songs in 177 song collections, comprising 262 volumes http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015034714280

I found a version of A Rovin' I liked on iTunes by a band called The Windjammers who seem to be based in Western Australia:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/shanties-songs-of-the-sea/id268644656

I liked their "Shenandoah", too. I heard a version sung by Bryn Terfel in full operatic style with — I forget, probably a harp, an electric guitar, a moog synthesiser and a bank of violins — and, no, it was just too much.

This seems to be them, although the site hasn't been updated since 2009, so maybe they no longer exist:

http://the-windjammers.tripod.com

I should very much like to do a folk-song collection one day.

It would be good.

On ones that are (or at least were) sung to children, as Anne and others mention, do you remember "Soldier, Soldier, Won't You Marry Me?" ?

The rotter gets all this clothing off the girl on the grounds that he can't get married without a smart coat, hat, and so on … "off she went to her grandfather's chest and brought him a coat of the very very best" … and then, when he's got the lot, he tells her he's already married. All very polite, at least in the version I heard — nothing about enjoying her favours under false pretences — but he certainly cops a few goods under false pretences. The song has the kind of repetitive structure that children often do like.

I should suppose this actually goes back to the days when most people owned few goods, only had a suit or two of clothes, and good-quality clothing actually did represent movable wealth.

[RuthieG]

Soldier, soldier, won't you marry me? appears to have originated in North Carolina, which surprised me. Often seen there with 'rifle' instead of 'musket'. I can't find it with the tune I know in any old song-books. I have seen quoted that it is sung to the tune of The British Grenadiers, but it doesn't look like the British Grenadiers tune that I know, either. The tune I know is quite different, and may perhaps be a later tune.

Ruth

[annise]

I'm too busy to search again - but I did hunt it up one time and it claimed to be not PD.
I got it from a cassette my son had - and sang it several times a day for a few years - he had some speech problems - seem to run in my husbands family - and I decided to sing talk and recite every time he was near - it seems to have worked , we had a bit of speech therapy about thin kings etc and he doesn't seem to have had problems - of course maybe he wouldn't have had them anyhow

Anne

[carolb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrmHSaxUSbc
This is the version we learned in school - though not with the harmony!

Even more shame on him that he not only had a wife, but 5 children as well!

Carol

[RuthieG]

Oh, yuck. How over-arranged is that? It loses all its charm. But yes, that's the tune I know.

ETA o/t Am I the only person who signs out of Gmail whenever I go to Youtube? I thoroughly object to Google's world domination ethos.

Ruth

[Mike001]

Soldier, soldier, won't you marry me? appears to have originated in North Carolina, which surprised me. Often seen there with 'rifle' instead of 'musket'.

This interested me, and I had a look round. I came across a note to the effect that Cecil Sharpe found a version in North Carolina on a visit in 1916-1918. This, presumably, would be behind the comment you found. That would seem very late for its first emergence, even if it had been around orally somewhat longer. I mean — there's a musket, a fife and a drum in there!

If the date should really turn out to be that late, it would have been interesting, because it would have represented conscious archaism. The Martini-Henry (breech-loading) rifle was issued to the British Army in the 1870s, and how long since columns of men have been moved around by fife and drum?

I found this:

This traditional song is probably the reason all the nice girls love a sailor. It is a dialogue between a soldier and a girl who would dearly love to be a soldier's wife, his in particular. Alas...

Written in 4/4 time, the title varies. There are variations on the title: "Soldier, Soldier, Will You Marry Me?"; "O Soldier Won't You Marry Me?" etc.

It appears to be of fairly recent origin, and was first collected as late as 1903. It is fairly well known on both sides of the Atlantic, but is probably of English origin. (thanks, Alexander Baron - London, England)

Unfortuantely, Mr. Baron presumably didn't give the website the source.

Google Books turns up this:

Link

That mentions several sources, including one given as:

1884 (1903)

I guess this means a 1903 reprint of an 1884 songbook.

But I'll bet you this song is older, at least in oral form, than the 1880s.

The version quoted there has:

I've got forty wives at home ...

… which is a fairly over-the-top denouement. If forty doesn't prick his conscience, or raise worries of arrest for bigamy, why balk at forty-one?

It also notes that the soldier's shirt and trousers are mentioned in other verses. The versions around now seem to keep, more discreetly, to outer garments.

[Darvinia]

ETA o/t Am I the only person who signs out of Gmail whenever I go to Youtube? I thoroughly object to Google's world domination ethos.

You are not alone. I do the same, even though I have videos up on Youtube. If I have to do maintenance on them, I sign in to do it, but don't browse while I'm signed in.

[RuthieG]

I have just found some wonderful books of early British popular music, and by early I mean early.

Popular music of the olden time : a collection of ancient songs, ballads, and dance tunes, illustrative of the national music of England : with short introductions to the different reigns, and notices of the airs from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : also a short account of the minstrels
Volume 1
Volume 2

Ruth