Still Growing- Alfred Emery (Som) 1908 Sharp D
[From: Cecil Sharp Manuscript Collection (at Clare College, Cambridge) (CJS2/9/1446). Several important stanzas are missing, the "O father" and "O daughter" stanzas and the "At the age of" stanza. This appears to be based on one of the English broadsides of the later half of the 1800s.
R. Matteson 2016]
Still Growing- Sung by Alfred Emery of Hambridge, Somerset on 4 April, 1908; Sharp D
The trees that do grow high and the leaves that do grow green,
The time is gone and past my love that you and I have seen,
One cold winter's night, my love, when you and I alone had been,
The bonny lad is young but he's growing.
I sent him to college for one year or two
And perhaps all in time my love, he then will do for you
We'll buy him white ribbons for to tie around his bonny waist
So to let the ladies know he's married.
I went to the college and looked over the wall,
I saw four-and-twenty gentlemen a-playing there at ball;
They would not let her go, for her true love she did call,
Because he was a young man and growing.
I made my love a shroud of the fine holland brown,
And every stitch I put in it the tears they will run down,
Then I'll sit and mourn until the day I die,
But I'll watch all on his child while he's[1] growing.
For now my love is dead and in his grave doth lie,
The green grass was growing over him so very high;
Saying "Once I had a sweetheart, but now I have never a one,
For he was to me, my true love, forever."
1. it's