Lowlands- Murray (ME) 1914 Hardy/Eckstorm/Gray
[From Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks: With Other Songs from Maine by Roland Palmer Gray; Harvard University Press, 1924. Also in Minstrelsy of Maine: folk-songs and ballads of the woods, p. 139 by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, Mary Winslow Smyth; 1927.
Gray miss-titles it "Lowlands Low" while Ecstorm calls it "Lowlands." It was collected by Eckstorm's brother Walter M. Hardy and supplied to Gray who first published it. Gray's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
SUNG by Murray, in Holden, Maine, 1914, and taken down by W. M. Hardy. The title was given by [a Prince Edward Islander named] Murray after some groping in his memory. The song, however, is evidently an alteration of "The Lowlands of Holland" (see Herd, Ancient and Modem Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 2 ff.). Other forms may be found in Logan, A Pedlars Pack of Ballads and Songs, pp. 22 ff. (see Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II, 317; V, 229); Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, pp. 54-55 (cf. p. xxvii); Herbert Hughes, Irish Country Songs, II, 70 ff.; and in broadsides (as H. Such, No. 236).
1 It's when we were married
And lay on our bed,
Up stepped a bold sea-captain
And stood at my bed-head,
2 Saying, "Arise, arise, ye married man,
And come along with me
To the Lowlands of Holland
To fight your enemy."
Chorus. My curse rest on that captain
That parted my love and me.
3 The Lowlands is a cold place,
And a place where they grow no green,
Neither flowers nor habitations
For a stranger to dwell in.
4. But the money is as plenty
As the leaves upon the tree.
[In the Lowlands of Holland
I will take my love at ease.] [1]
Chorus. My curse rest on that captain
That parted my love and me.
5 There will ne'er a sash go round my waist
Nor a comb go in my hair,
Neither fire, coal, nor candlelight
To show my beauty fair.
Chorus. My curse rest on that captain
That parted my love and me.
6 And neither will I married be
Until the day I dee,
Since stormy winds and cruel waves
Have parted my love from me.
Chorus. My curse rest on that captain
That sailed the stormy seas.
1. additional text from Eckstorm which was taken from other versions.