George Collins- Enos White (Hants) 1955 Copper
[White's version is nearly identical to the versions collected by Gardiner in Hampshire in 1906. Similar versions were collected in the US under the title of Johnny Collins in the early 1900s.
R. Matteson 2012]
From: Five Songs from Hampshire and One from Sussex
Bob Copper and Michael Bell
Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Dec., 1961), pp. 72-80
FIVE SONGS FROM HAMPSHIRE AND ONE FROM SUSSEX
Collected by BOB COPPER and transcribed by MICHAEL BELL
THE following songs were tape-recorded on behalf of the B.B.C. in 1954 and 1955. The collector and the transcriber have appended notes to the songs, as indicated by their initials.
GEORGE COLLINS
Sung by Enos White, Axford, Hants., July 1955
B.B.C. Record RPL 21857
1. George Collins walked out one May morning
When May was all in bloom,
And there he saw a fair pretty maid
A-washing her white marble stone.
2. She hooped, she holloed, she called out so loud,
She waved her lily-white hand.
'Come hither to me, George Collins', cried she,
'For your life it won't last you long.'
3. He put his benbow down on the bank-side
And across the river he sprung.
He clips his arms round her middle so small
And he kiss-ed her red rosy cheeks.
4. George Collins rode home to his father's own house
And he knock-ed at the ring.
'Arise, arise, dear father', he cried,
'Arise and let me in.'
5. 'Arise, arise, dear mother', he cried,
'Arise and shake up my bed.'
'Arise, arise, dear sister', he cried,
'Get a napkin to tie round my head.'
6. 'For if I should die this night
Which I suppose I shall,
You bury me under that white marble stone
That leads from fair Ellender's home.'
7. Fair Ellender sat in her hall one day
A-weaving her silk so fine.
She saw the finest corpse a-coming
That ever her eyes shone on.
8. Fair Ellender said unto her head maid,
'Whose corpse is this so fine?'
She made a reply, 'George Collins's corpse,
An old true-lover of thine.'
9. 'O put him down, my little brave boy,
And open his coffin so wide,
That I might kiss George Collins's cheeks
For ten thousand times he has kissed mine.'
10. This news being carried to fair London town
And wrote on London gates:
'There were six pretty maids died all in one night,
'Twas all for George Collins's sake.'
Enos will always be one of my favourite singers. A slight man of 70 years (at that time-now deceased), face and arms tanned to the colour of old oak by the sun of nearly as many harvests. He had been a carter for the whole of his working life, working on the farms in the immediate surroundings. I took all his recordings in the front parlour of his tiny cottage at the back of the 'Crown Inn', Axford, and afterwards spent the remainder of many long summer evenings on a rickety wooden bench under a
gnarled apple tree in his garden. There we woulds it while he recalled many of the old singers, sipping our ale until the last of the light had faded. He remembered Ralph Vaughan Williams's visit to the area some 50 years before.' He used to come up with another gentleman from the station at Micheldever, in a horse and fly', he said, 'Black coats and hard-hats they had on and one was the "song-getter" and the other the "music writer".' - B.C.