I Wish, I Wish- Ethel Findlater (Ork) c.1918 REC
[From Collection- School of Scottish Studies; Track ID - 63400; Original Tape ID - SA1968.193
Ethel was born in 1899, raised in Dounby, Orkney and died there in 1973. Her mother's sources are possibly families of fisherman since some of her ballads do not reflect Scottish tradition must have been taken from fisherman who traveled to the Maritime Canada area.
R. Matteson 2017]
Listen: http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/63400/1
Summary - In this song, a young woman has been abandoned by her lover after falling pregnant. She knows she will never be a maid again, and wishes that her baby was born, so that she could die.
I Wish, I Wish- sung by Ethel Findlater of Dounby, Orkney about c.1918 as recorded by Alan J. Bruford in 1968. Ethel learned the first two verses from her mother around fifty years before, and got the last verse from a People's Journal folk song supplement.
I wish, I wish, but I wish in vain,
I wish I was but a maid again;
But a maid again I will never be
Till an apple grows on an orange tree.
I wish my babe he had been born,
And sitting on his daddy's knee
And I myself been dead and gone
And the green green grass growing over me
Oh dig my grave both wide and deep
And place white lilies at my head and feet,
And on my breast place a snow-white dove,
To signify that I died for love.