Seventeen come Sunday- C. Renals (Corn) 1978 REC
[From: Cornish traveller Charlotte Renals on VT119CD ‘Catch me if you Can’. Yates notes follow. Missing the first and last stanzas, the second stanza seems to have been borrowed from the "Milkmaid" / "Dabbling in the dew" which are parallel but different ballads. The rest is standard revision stanzas.
R. Matteson 2018]
Versions of Seventeen Come Sunday have turned up all over the place.Cecil Sharp noted twenty-two sets in England and a further four versions in the Appalachian Mountains of North America. Other collectors have found it up and down Canada’s Maritime Coast and in Ireland (where it is also known as As I Gaed ower a Whinny Knowe), although the song appears to be less well-known in Scotland. ‘I pickt up this old song and tune from a country girl in Nithsdale. I never met with it elsewhere in Scotland,’ wrote Robert Burns, who rewrote the text as Waukrife Minnie (Wakeful Mother), and sent it to James Johnson for inclusion in his Scots Musical Museum. The song was published by a number of Victorian broadside printers, including both Catnach and Such of London, which may help explain why the song became so well-known.
Charlotte Renals was born in 1902 into one of the best known West Country travelling families, the Orchards. She is Vic Legg's aunt and was source of many of his songs as were her two sisters Betsy and Sophie (Vic's mother).
Their father Edwin was born in 1879 and was married to Susan (also an Orchard) when he was twenty and she was sixteen. At that time they run a coconut shy at local fairs until Edwin became a fairground bare-knuckle fighter, taking on all-comers for three weeks. He earned good money, in fact he earned enough to buy themselves a wagon, enabling them to give up the fair life to go on the road. They hawked haberdashery and when they stopped at night they would often meet up with other Gypsy families and songs would be shared around the camp fire.
Charlotte and her sister Betsy married brothers Bob and Jack Renals, on the same day in 1924. They went on the road and although the boys were Gorgios (non Gypsies) they took to travelling life for the next seven years. (from Pete Coe's notes)
Seventeen come Sunday- sung by Cornish traveller Charlotte Renals (b. 1902) on VT119CD ‘Catch me if you Can’.
‘Where are you going to my pretty maid?
Where are you going my honey?’
She answered me quite cheerfully,
‘On an errand for my mummy.’
Chorus: With my rue dum a day,
Fol a diddle lay,
Whack fol a leero lie do.
‘May I come too my fair pretty maid?
May I come too my honey?’
‘You may for me kind sir,’ she said,
‘And of course you’re kindly welcome.’
Chorus
‘How old are you my fair pretty maid?
How old are you my honey?’
She answered me quite cheerfully,
‘I am seventeen come Sunday.’
Chorus
Her shoes was white and her stockings was black,
Her buckles shine like silver,
She had a dark and a rolling eye,
And her hair it dangled in ringlets.
Chorus
‘Will you come down to my mammie’s house,
When the moon shine bright and clearly?
If you come down, I will let you in
And my mammie shall not hear you.’
Chorus
Now I went down to her mammie’s house,
When the moon shine bright and clearly,
I went down and she let me in,
And she rolled in my arms till the morning.
Chorus
She says, ‘Now will you marry me?
Say yes, no, now or never.
And if you will not marry me,
I’m a girl undone for ever.’
Chorus