Recordings & Info: 7Ua. Young Ladies (Little Sparrow)
Fair and Tender Ladies
DESCRIPTION: Lyric song, in which the narrator, a woman, laments the falseness of men. She sadly remarks, "Oh if I were some little sparrow / And had I wings so I could fly / I'd fly away to my own true lover / And when he courted, I'd deny."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (Belden)
KEYWORDS: courting love betrayal nonballad bird lyric
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) US(Ap,MW,SE,So) Ireland
REFERENCES (31 citations):
GreigDuncan6 1156, "Consider All Ye Fair Maids" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Belden, pp. 477-478, "Little Sparrow" (2 texts)
Randolph 73, "You Fair and Pretty Ladies" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 121-122, "You Fair and Pretty Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 73A)
BrownII 71, "The Drowsy Sleeper" (2 texts plus 3 excerpts; the "D" excerpt contains "Fair and Tender Ladies" verses)
BrownIII 254, "Little Sparrow" (4 texts plus 1 excerpt and 1 fragment; the "F" text, however, is primarily "The Butcher Boy" or an "I Wish I Wish" piece of some sort)
BrownSchinhanV 254, "Little Sparrow" (3 tunes plus text excerpts)
Morris, #196, "Little Sparrow" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Hudson 51, p. 167, "Young Ladies" (1 text)
Moore-Southwest 95, "Come All You Fair Maidens" (1 text, 1 tune)
Owens-1ed, pp. 136-137, "The Little Sparrow" (1 text, 1 tune)
Owens-2ed, pp. 52-53, "The Little Sparrow" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 312-313, "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, with local title "Come All Ye Maids and Pretty Fair Maidens"; tune on p. 440)
Brewster 80, "Little Sparrow" (1 text)
Wyman-Brockway I, p. 55 "Little Sparrow" (1 text, 1 tune)
Shellans, pp. 26-27, "Constant Sorrow" (1 text, 1 tune, beginning with "Man of Constant Sorrow" but with most of "Fair and Tender Ladies" grafted on at the end)
Boswell/Wolfe 37, pp. 66-67, "Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FSUSA 17, "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FSNA 99, "Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune); see also 70, "Love is Pleasin'" (1 text, 1 tune, of four verses, one of which goes here, one belongs with "Waly Waly," and the fourth could be from several sources)
SharpAp 118, "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (18 texts, 18 tunes)
Sharp/Karpeles-80E 45, "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune -- a composite version)
Cambiaire, p. 61, "O, Waly, Waly" (1 text, clearly mis-titled by Cambiaire [and misfiled by Roud on that basis], since neither the phrase "O Waly Waly" nor "The Water is Wide" are used; the lyrics are entirely consistent with this piece); p. 98, "I Wish I Was A Little Sparrow" (1 single-verse fragment)
Ritchie-SingFam, pp. 185-186, "[Come All Ye Fair]" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ritchie-Southern, p. 18, "Fair and Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune)
Abrahams/Foss, pp. 88-89, "Little Sparrow" (1 text, 1 tune); p. 145, (no title) (1 tune, partial text)
JHCox 140, "Young Ladies (Little Sparrow)" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Tunney-SongsThunder, p. 160, "The Little Swallow" (1 text)
PSeeger-AFB, p. 24 "Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 164, "Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies" (1 text)
DT, FAIR&TEN*
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 33, #2 (1988), pp, 44-45, "Come All You Maidens" (1 text, 1 tune, the Sara Cleveland version, which doesn't mention fair and tender ladies and makes the sparrow a swallow)
Roud #451
RECORDINGS:
Sheila Clark, "Come All Ye Fair Ladies" (on LegendTomDula)
Sara Cleveland, "Come All You Maidens" (on SCleveland01)
Martha Hall, "Young and Tender Ladies" (on MMOK, MMOKCD)
Sarah Hawkes, "Little Sparrow" (on Persis1)
Roscoe Holcomb, "Willow Tree" (on Holcomb1, HolcombCD1)
Pete Seeger, "Come All Fair Maids" (on PeteSeeger02, PeteSeegerCD01); "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (on PeteSeeger05)
BROADSIDES:
Murray, Mu23-y1:105, "The Wheel of Fortune," James Lindsay (Glasgow), 19C [extremely mixed, with the "Wheel of Fortune" verse, a thyme stanza, a bit of "Fair and Tender Ladies," a "Queen of Heart" verse, and more]
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Peggy Gordon" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Oh, Johnny, Johnny" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Rambleaway" (theme)
cf. "Lora Williams" (tune)
NOTES: Hudson for some reason lists this as a British import, without offering supporting evidence. Paddy Tunney's Irish version is about all I can find in support of his claim. The evidence would seem to indicate that this is one of those songs that went the other way. - RBW
Steve Roud splits GreigDuncan6 1156 as #6820, noting that -- if they are the same as #450 -- these two texts are the only two British versions found to date. Of the longer GreigDuncan6 text only three of the six verses are very close to the US texts ("star in a summer mornin'," "they'll tell you stories," "little swallow"); the other three verses match in spirit but not in words. The one verse fragment is the "star in a summer's morning" verse.
Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Mineola, 2000 (reprint of 1840 Dublin edition)), p. 96, quotes "The Little Swallow" "words which have been handed down by tradition ... commencing: 'I would I were a little swallow, I would rise into the air and fly, Away to that inconstant rover'." - BS
------------------------
Fair and Tender Ladies (Mainly Norfolk)
[Roud 451 ; Ballad Index R073 ; trad.]
Peggy Seeger sang the Appalachian love song Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens in 1957 on her 10" Topic LP Eleven American Ballads and Songs, reissued in 1996 on the Fellside CD Classic Peggy Seeger. Alan Lomax commented in the album's sleeve notes:
This classic Appalachian love song takes the view, which is unusual in American love songs, that love is both sorrowful and dangerous.
A year later, Pete Seeger sang this song with the more usual title Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies on his Topic EP Pete and Five Strings. Karl Dallas commented in the sleeve notes:
Sharp printed 18 versions of this beautiful song [in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians], including a version from one of his best sources, Mrs. Jane Gentry of Hot Springs, North Carolina. Compare Pete's very free interpretation with sister Peggy's more rhythmic performance.
Maggie Holland sang Fair and Tender Ladies in 1983 on The English Country Blues Band's last album, Home and Deranged. This track was also included on their anthology Unruly.
Peter Bellamy sang Fair and Tender Ladies in 1985 on his EFDSS album Second Wind. He commented in the album's sleeve notes:
Another love which still holds me in thrall is the white folk music of Southern Appalachia. Kentucky's splendid Jean Ritchie was the physical medium through whom I first contacted that particular Summer Country and it is she I must thank for both Fair and Tender Ladies and Maria's Gone. I learned early on the inadvisability of trying to ape accents but elements of the thrilling mountain vocal style are hard to escape. Anyway, who wants to?
Hamish Bayne and Martin Cole sang Fair and Tender Maidens in 1991 on their Fellside album Making Music.
Scalene (Sandra and Nancy Kerr and James Fagan) sang Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies in 1999 on their Fellside album Scalene. The liner notes commented:
Sandra remembers hearing this in her youth, on a recording by Peggy Seeger. The sleeve note pointed out that love is both sorrowful and dangerous. No change there, then. Cecil Sharp gives several variants of this in his English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, from which we collated this text and chose the lovely 3/2 tune.
Bram Taylor sang Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies in 2004 on his Fellside album The Night Is Young.
Jim Moray sang this song as Fair and Tender Lovers in 2004 on his CD single Sprig of Thyme and two years later on his eponymous CD Jim Moray.
Jon Boden learnt this song “from an Appalachian source recording on vinyl in Cecil Sharp House. I spent a couple of quite magical days in the listening room aged 21 or so, in the days before internet music.” He sang it with the title Sparrow as the September 26, 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.