Plough Jags- Elsham-Brigg (Linc) c.1880 Carpenter
[Excerpt with Madam stanzas from: Elsham (Lincolnshire) The Plough Jags [42]; AFC 1972/001, Folder 29 (Box 1, Packet 3A); on Microfilm Reel 2. Text from James Madison Carpenter and the Mummers' Play by Steve Roud and Paul Smith (Folk Music Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4, Special Issue on the James Madison Carpenter Collection (1998), pp. 496-513). In the years between 1933 and 1935, James Madison Carpenter amassed the biggest collection of mummers' play texts ever made from ex-performers in England and Scotland.
R. Matteson 2017]
[LADY]: I am a lady bright and fair,
Me fortunes is me charms,
I was thrown away so scornfully
All from me lover's arms.
He promised for to marry me,
Which you will understand,
He listed for a soldier,
And went to some foreign land.
SERGEANT: Madam, I've got gold and silver,
Madam, I've got house and land,
Madam, I've got worlds of treasure,
They are all at thy command (All will be at thy command).
LADY: What care I for thee gold or silver,
What care I for thee house and land,
What care I for thee worldly riches,
All I want is a nice young man.
FOOL: That's me, my dear!
LADY: Old man you are deceitful
As any of the rest.
But I shall have the young man
Which I do love the best.