My Pretty Maid- Bessie Bock (WV) c.1850 Cox
[From Folk Songs of the South- J. H. Cox, 1925. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
126 MY PRETTY MAID
For this song, usually known as " Seventeen Come Sunday," see Johnson, The Scots Musical Museum, No. 397 (as altered by Burns) ; Cromek, Select Scottish Songs, 1810, 11, 116; Lyle, Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 155; Ford, Vaga- bond Songs and Ballads of Scotland, 1, 102; broadside, "Soldier and the Fair Maid" (Forth, Pocklington, No. 66); Sharp and Marson, Folk-Songs from Somerset, n, 4; Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 61; Sharp, English Folk Songs, 1, 104; Butterworth, Folk Songs from Sussex, p. 16; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, 1, 92; n, 9, 269; iv, 291; Baring-Gould, Songs of the West, No. 73, in, 42 (rewritten; cf. iv, xxxiv). Cf. Child, iv, 389.
"My Pretty Maid." Contributed by Miss Bessie Bock, Farmington, Marion County; learned from her grandmother, a lady of Scotch-Irish descent, who learned it when a little girl and who would be eighty years old if now living.
1 "O where are you going, my pretty maid?
O where are you going, my honey? "
She answered me so modestly,
"An errand for my mommie."
2 "How old are you, my pretty maid?
How old are you, my honey? "
She answered me so modestly,
"I'm seventeen come Sunday."
3 "0 where do you live, my pretty maid?
O where do you live, my honey?"
She answered me so modestly,
"In a wee, wee cot with my mommie."
4 "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?
Will you marry me, my honey? "
She answered me so modestly,
"If it weren't for my mommie."