BUSHES AND BRIERS

Through bushes and through briers I lately took my way,
All for to hear the small birds sing, and the lambs to skip and play.*

I overheard my own true-love. Her voice it was so clear.
Long time I have been waiting for the coming of my dear.

I drew myself to a tree, a tree that did look green,
Where the leaves shaded over us. We scarcely could be seen.

I sat myself down by my love till she began to mourn.
I'm of this opinion that my heart is not my own.

Sometimes I am uneasy and troubled in my mind.
Sometimes I'll think I'll go to my love and tell to him my mind.

And if I should go to my love, my love he will say nay.
I show to him my boldness, he'd ne'er love me again.

I cannot think the reason young women love young men,
For they are so false hearted young women to trepan,**

For they are so false hearted young women to trepan,
So the green grave shall see me, for I can't love that man.

*repeat the second line of each verse
**[Trepan - Archaic - tr.v. -To trap; ensnare.]


Transcribed from images at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads.
The tune is the one found in Bushes and Briars, Folk Songs Collected by Ralph
Vaughan Williams
(Roy Palmer, 1983). The text above is the one Palmer used in the book - although
it appears that it was Vaughan-Williams himself who mated the text to the tune.

Here are the notes from Palmer:
In the late autumn of 1903, after giving a lecture on folk song at Brentwood
(Essex),
Vaughan Williams was approached by two middle-aged ladies. They explained that
their father,
the Vicar of Ingrave, was about to give a tea-party for some old people in the
village,
who might conceivably know some songs. Vaughan Williams accepted an invitation
to attend,
met various singers, and returned the following day, 4 December, 1903, to note
26 songs.
Up to that time, he wrote: 'I knew and loved the few English folk songs which
were then available
in printed collections, but I only believed in them vaguely, just as the layman
believes
in the facts of astronomy; my faith was not yet active.' When Vaughan Williams
heard 'Bushes and Briars'
he 'felt it was something he had known all his life'. It was the first folk song
he noted,
only three months after Cecil Sharp's first, 'The Seeds of Love'. The singer was
a seventy-year-old labourer,
Charles Pottipher, who, when asked about this and other of his songs, said:
'If you can get the words the Almighty will send you the tune.' Vaughan Williams
took down the melody,
commenting: 'It is impossible to reproduce the free rhythm and subtle portamento
effects
of this beautiful tune in ordinary notation. 'He noted the words of the first
verse only,
later completing the text from a Broadside issued by Fortey of Seven Dials.


@love @courtship
filename[ BUSHBRI2
JD
Feb07
mudcat.org

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