Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!

Subject: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 11 - 08:31 PM

Having searched for this by both title, and distinctive line "O saddle to me" It appears not to be in the DT
This version is from:
"English Folk-Songs for Schools" (Curwen Edition 6051)
collected and arranged by S Baring Gould, M.A. and Cecil J. Sharp, B.A.

Three gipsies stood at the Castle gate,
They sang so high, they sang so low.
The lady sat in her chamber late,
Her heart it melted away as snow.

They sang so sweet, they sang so shrill,
That fast her tears began to flow.
And she laid down her silken gown,
Her golden rings and all her show.

She pluck-ed off her high-heeled shoes,
A-made of Spanish leather, O.
She would in the street, with her bare, bare feet;
All out in the wind and weather, O.

O saddle to me my milk-white steed,
And go and fetch my pony, O!
That I may ride and seek my bride,
Who is gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O!

O he rode high, and he rode low,
He rode through wood and copses too,
Until he came to an open field,
And there he espied his a-lady, O!

What makes you leave your house and land?
Your golden treasures for to go?
What makes you leave your new-wedded lord,
To follow the wraggle taggle gipsies, O?

What care I for my house and land?
What care I for my treasure, O?
What care I for my new-wedded lord,
I'm off with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O!

Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
And to-night you'll sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O!

What care I for a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O!

NP

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Janie
Date: 13 Feb 11 - 10:28 PM

Hi Nigel,

Check the DT for the "Gypsy Rover."

On another thread (somewhere, sometime) I recollected about a neighbor girl and I swinging and singing "Raggle Taggle Gypsy Oh.,and wondered where we might have learned it. I don't remember singing it in school, but can't think where else we might have heard it in the mid to late 50' or very early 60's. The lyrics we sang are very similar, and the verses were fewer. Makes me think we did learn it at school, from a derivative "school" album used by one of our elementary school teachers.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 03:23 PM

I recall singing the song in school many years ago, so it was also sung in the U. S., but only remember the tag-line.
I haven't checked the school songbook permathreads.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 03:31 PM

Wiki and Contemplator put the song together with "The Gypsy Laddie," "Black Jack Davy," etc., but I like the idea of treating it separately. The 'w' is left off the 'wraggle' in some versions.

Apparently variants date back to the 18th C., but I haven't studied the song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 11:35 PM

Well enough known version of The Gypsy Laddie to have been a running theme in Dorothy L Sayers final Lord Peter Wimsey detective novel, Busman's Honeymoon, 1936, in which Lord Peter finally gets to marry his Harriet after the various vagaries of his courtship related in three earlier novels. The first two chapters are called New-Wedded Lord & Goosefeather Bed, and there are refs to 'cold open field' &c.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 04:30 AM

Thanks for the comments. I'm just posting words from: "English Folk-Songs for Schools" (Curwen Edition 6051)
collected and arranged by S Baring Gould, M.A. and Cecil J. Sharp, B.A.
Working slowly through the book (when time allows) and posting anything I find if not already here. (or if a noticeably different version)

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 04:42 AM

Very like the version I learned in school for the Inter Cert Music(Ireland)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 05:57 AM

I much prefer the version that continues the story, her husband kills them all then beheads his wife!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 06:13 AM

... and, Ron, I like the version of the beheaded wife which ends "And kicked it against the wall" ~~ also found in versions of Little Musgrove &c.

~M~

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 09:47 AM

Here's a tune for this - one of many tunes, no doubt:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Wraggle-Taggle_Gypsies.htm

The unabridged dictionary says that 'wraggle' is a variant of 'wrangle.' That would be suitable for gypsies, who often were in the horse trade.

'Taggle' is an archaic word meaning to tag or to follow.

And here all these years I thought 'wraggle taggle' referred to their ragged appearance.

By the way, just the other day I referred to the woman in my church who lures lost cats in and finds homes for them as a 'cat-wrangler.'

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 02:52 PM

Thanks, Nigel, for posting the lyrics.

Please post the index in one of the permathreads, if it hasn't already been done. Perhaps Songbook Indexing: Miscellaneous Songbooks. Thread 118474.
Or maybe ask Joe to help set-up a thread for English school songbooks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 05:39 PM

My mother sang this when I was a child, word for word as Nigel posted.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 05:54 PM

Isn't Raggle Taggle is the traditional spelling?

My father (John Dwyer) wrote a couple of parodies of this song that I think have been mentioned in other threads.

SRS

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Janie
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 08:23 PM

Here's a clicky for leenia's link.

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Wraggle-Taggle_Gypsies.htm


Yup, same tune my nieghbor Patty and I sang.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Feb 11 - 04:50 PM

Stilly and Janie,

I believe that site has copied DT SongID=7180.

That's the version that was published in the U.S. in the very popular "Fireside Book of Folk Songs" -- that we had in our family, too. (Edited by Margaret Bradford Boni, published by Simon & Schuster, 1947) The DT quotes the notes for the song, but doesn't credit the book.

Ms. Boni acknowledged no written source for that particular song, it's just listed as "English". Very similar to what's listed as Sharp MSS., 264/373 (and published by Sharp multiple times) "sung by Mrs. Overd, Langport, Somerset", according to Bronson "The Singing Traditiono of Child's Popular Ballads".

Instead of "wraggle-taggle" it's often "draggle tail" or "draggletail", and in fact "draggletail" is what Mrs. Overd used, FWIW.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The wraggle taggle Gipsies, O!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Feb 11 - 05:24 PM

Can actually be spelt either with or without the initial 'W'. Without would seem to imply more of the rag-tag, untidy, 'draggletail' sort of meaning; whereas with the intial 'w' it can, as mentioned above, also suggest a connection with horse-trading ~~ 'wrangling'. It will be remembered by lovers of Edwardian children's books that Kenneth Grahame, in The Wind In The Willows, mentions gypsies' love of horse-dealing. I believe that in the old days of the opening up of the West, so beloved of Hollywood folklore, the 'wrangler' was the staff member on a cattle-ranch whose job was to look after the welfare of the horses of the men who actually rode with the herds: a well-known brand of denim clothing now bearing the title ~~ the jeans I have on at this moment are Wranglers.

~Michael~