Quaker's Song- Rachel Post (MI) 1868 Gardner A
[From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan- by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
176 THE QUAKER SONG
For discussion of an Irish folk song somewhat similar to this dialogue song see Barry, JAFL, XXIV, 341-342. For a text and references see Mackenzie, p. 380. See also Brewster, JAFL, XLIX, 247, and Eddy, Nos. 119 and 120.
A. Quaker's Song- sung in 1931 by Mrs. Rachel Post, Belding, who learned the song at school, about 1868.
1 "Madam, I have come a-courting,
O dear, O dear me.
It's not for pleasure nor for sporting,
O dear, O dear me."[1]
2 "You have come at your own desire,
Tee-addle ink-turn, tee-addle lay.
You can sit and court the fire,
Tee-addle ink-turn, tee-addle lay."
3 "Here's a ring cost forty shillings,
Thou shalt wear it if thou art willing."
4 "What care I for ring or money?
I want a man that'll call me honey."
5 "Madam, thou art tall and slender,
And I know thy heart is tender."
6 "O you're nothing but a flatterer,
And I never loved a Quaker."
7 "O softly I throw my arms around thee,
And with kisses I will crown thee."
8 "Son of a gun, don't you come any nigher;
If you do, I'll kick you in the fire."
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1. This refrain is repeated in alternate stanzas.