All You Maidens- Army ballad (UK) c.1942 Henderson
[From Hamish Henderson's "Ballads of World War II" (Caledonian Press, Glasgow, 1947). Collected by SEUMAS MOR MACEANRUIG. Collected for THE LILI MARLEEN CLUB OF GLASGOW.
Recorded (almost) verbatim on Ewan MacColl's "Bless 'em All and Other British Army Songs" (Riverside, 1959). He calls it "All You Maidens Sweet and Kind."
Henderson titles this "An R.A. [Regular Army] Ballad." He notes that it was "much sung, especially in the earlier years of the war." (Lighter post December, 2016)
R. Matteson 2017]
All You Maidens Sweet and Kind.
Now all you maidens sweet and kind,
Just bear in mind a soldier's love is hard to find.
So when you've found one good and true,
Don't change the old love for a new.
She was a maiden sweet and kind,
Brought up in high society;
A soldier in this battery
Came and stole that girl way from me.
Her father came home late on night,
And found his house without a light;
He went upstairs to go to bed,
When a certain thought came in his head.
He went into his daughter's room,
And found her hanging from a beam;
He took a knife to cut her down,
And on her breast these words he found:
My love is for a soldier boy,
Who's gone across the deep blue sea.
I often seem to think of him,
But he never seems to think of me.
I wish my baby could be born,
Then all my troubles would be gone,
But dig my grave and dig it deep,
And place white lilies at my feet.
(Repeat stanza 1.)