The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #12132   Message #1177158
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
03-May-04 - 05:35 PM
Thread Name: Line from 'Henry Lee' (Young Hunting)
Subject: Lyr Add: LOVE HENRY (from Cox)
There is another "Love Henry" in Cox in which a chair of gold appears in the first stanza.

Lyr. Add: LOVE HENRY (Cox B)

"Come in, come in, Love Henry," she said,
"And sit on my right knee;
I'll give you a chair of yellow green gold,
And all the best is for thee."

"I can't come in, nor I shall not come in,
To sit on your right knee;
For the girl I left in the India land
Will think long of my coming home."

She leant herself all over the fence,
The kisses she gave were three;
A little penknife all in her hand,
She would it in fully.*

"O live, O live, Love Henry," she said,
"A half an hour or more,
And all the doctors in the town
Shall be here at your cure."

"O how can I live, O how can I live,
O how can I live?" said he;
"For don't you see my own heart's blood,
Come trinkling to my knee?"

"Come down, come down, Polly Parrot," she said,
"And sit on my right knee;
I'll give you a cage of yellow green gold,
And all the best is for thee."

"I can't come down, nor I shall not come down,
To sit on your right knee;
For it have n't been long since you killed Love Henry-
How soon you might kill me!"

*note- "She wished to thrust it completely into his bosom."
Miss Polly McKinney, Sophia, WVA, 1919. Cox 9B, Folk-Songs of the South, Dover ed., p. 42-44.

All sorts of variants on what she offered the parrot. Some of them:
Cage of beaten goud-gold, yellow gold, ivory beaten gold, purest yellow gold, cage o' the beaten gold, cage o' the wiry gold.

Door of ivory, door of an oak tree, of the willow tree.

And hang it on yo(a)nders tree.
When now it's but the wand.

I'll gie it unto thee.
In deed of property.

Come down...,
Light down upon my hand.
For ae goud feather that's in your wing
I woud gie a' my land.

Some versions have a better solution:

Go bend to me my bow, she said,
And set it to my ee.
And I will get that bonnie bird
Come quickly down to me.
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