Died For Love- Sarah Porter (Sussex) 1961 Matthews
[From: Brian Matthews Collection ('Woody' tape) recorded around 1961. Additional recording in 1965 in The Three Cups, Punnetts Town on Just Another Saturday Night: Sussex 1960 (MTCD309-10). Also Died For Love; Musical Traditions: Articles; 2000, Issue 69, p.25.
Bio except and MT liner notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
BIO: Sarah Ann Porter was born in 1905 and died aged 75 in 1980. She came from the travelling family of Williams, her mother being a Barton from Rogate in Hampshire. Sarah Porter - photo courtesy Ambrose Porter. They travelled extensively in Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, following the usual traditional occupations, mainly fruit and hop picking.
MT notes: A song everyone knows, even today in the right company, so it's no surprise that there are 225 Roud entries, or that 45 of these are sound recordings, encompassing almost every singer you care to think of - though only Jasper Smith, May Bradley, Geoff Ling, Amy Birch and Emma Vickers have made it onto CD.
Closer to the truth is that everyone knows a version of it, because it's one of those songs which attracts 'floating verses' like a magnet, while being alarmingly close to countless other songs which musicologists tell us are actually different. Who cares - it's a great wallow in almost any circumstances!
20. Died For Love (sung by Sarah Porter) (Recorded in 1965 in The Three Cups, Punnetts Town)
There is an alehouse down in the town
Where my love oftimes sets hisself down
Some other flash girl he may take on his knee
And don't you think that's a grief to me.
A grief to me, I'll tell you for why
Because she's got more gold than I
Her gold will waste and her beauty will fly
And in a short time she'll be poorer than I.
I wish the Lord my baby was born,
Sat smiling on his daddy's knee
Some other flash girl he may take on his knee
And don't you think that's a grief to me.
A grief to me, I'll tell you for why
Because she's got more gold than I
Her gold will waste and her beauty will fly
And in a short time she'll be poorer than I.
Oh dig my grave large, wide and deep
Place a marble stone at my head and feet
And in the middle a free turtle dove
To show the wide world I died for love.
I died for love and love you can't see
Who took away my liberty
My liberty's got a free good will
But there's [gone in vain 'cos] I love him still.