My Bonny Lad Is Young- Thompson (York) c.1893 Kidson
[Fragment from: Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Volume 2, Issues 6-9 by Folk-Song Society (Great Britain) 1906; with music. Their notes follow. Apparently there are no additional stanzas of her ballad.
R. Matteson 2016]
Mrs. Kate Thompson learnt her version of the song when a child at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and this copy is also recognised by another Yorkshire singer. The second version, to a very fragmentary portion of the ballad, was noted down in Dorsetshire, and sent to me by the Rev. Capel Cure.
Mr. Baring-Gould, Mr. Sharp, and other collectors, have printed copies of this, which I take to be one of our most curious English folk-songs. I should perhaps say British, for although the ballad originally first saw the light as "Lady Mary Ann," in Johnson's Scots' Musical Museum, 1792 (No. 377), and afterwards as "Young Craigston" in the Scottish ballad-books, yet many versions have been recovered in the south of England, and there is really not the slightest evidence that the ballad or the various airs recently collected are of Scottish origin. For other copies, see Mr. Baring-Gould's Songs of the West; Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs; FolkSong Journal (Vol. i, p. 214, and ii, p. 206); and Mr. Sharp's Folk-Songs from Somerset (Vol. i).
"My Bonny Lad Is Young But He's Growing." Sung by Kate Thompson of Knaresborough, Yorkshire; dated between 1891-1897. Collector: Kidson, Frank
"Oh, father, dear father, I'm afraid you have done wrong,
You've married me to a college-boy, his age it is too young;
For his age it is but sixteen, and the fairest of it is,
That my bonny lad is young, but he's growing,
Oh, That my bonny lad is young, but he's growing."