Young Ladies All I Come A-courting: (IN) 1926 Neal
[No source known. From Mabel Evangeline Neal's "Brown County [Indiana] songs and ballads." M. A. Thesis, Indiana University, 1926. Reprinted in The Bennet Family - Volume 20 - page 313 by Mintie Allen Royse - 1958. Royse's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
"Young Ladies, All, I Come A-Courting" most frequently known as "The Quaker's Courtship," was collected by Miss Neal in Brown County, Indiana. This may be a variant of "The Old Bachelor," listed as 1721 Al by Brewster, in the Library of Congress, sung by Doris Ward, Princeton. (HFB, IV: No. 2 [June, 1945], pp. 25-29.) Her attribution that it is of Irish origin seems unfounded, and her curious statement that it has the same idea "of the bribe song in love-making that we find in Child No. 374" (Neal, p. 170) is apparently a misprint since F. J. Child included only 305 ballads in his The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. See SFQ, VIII, No. 3 (Sept., 1944), p. 221 [Quaker Courtship] ; Belden, p. 265 [The Quaker's Wooing]; Brown, I, 123-24
Young Ladies All I Come A-courting
Young ladies all I come a-courting
Oh, dear, oh, dear me!
I've come for pleasure, not for sporting,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me!
Guess you came of your own desire,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a,
Come a little nearer, I'll kick you in the fire,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a.
Here's a ring and you may wear it,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me!
Here's some money, you may have it,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me!
What cares I for rings or money,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a,
I want a man that'll call me 'Honey,'
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a.
I'll go right home and tell my mother,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me !
Perhaps she'll tell me of another,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me !
Go right home and tell your mother,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a,
If she don't hear you tell your father,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a.
I'll catch my horse and light upon him,
Oh, dear, oh, dear me !
(Girl interrupts and starts to chase him out)
“Clear out! clear out! you silly old fellow,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a,
You're nothing but a Sabbath-breaker,
Tee-i-inktum-tee-i-a.
Like “Billy Boy” p. 141, “Young Ladies, All, I Come A-Courting” is properly a dialogue song rather than a play-party. It is, moreover, closely related to a large group of courting songs with parallel stanzas which may easily migrate from song to song (cf. “A Paper of Pins,” “Madam, Will You Walk,” and “The Courting Cage” in Brown III, 6-13) ; each, however, seems to be essentially a distinct song.