The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #32073   Message #1331374
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
18-Nov-04 - 02:43 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: An Acre of Land
Subject: Lyr Add: THE CAMBRIC SHIRT (from Max Hunter)
Thanks, Tradsinger.
The song collected by Max Hunter, mentioned by Sandy Paton,with both audio and midi, is called "Rosemary and Thyme." Max Hunter

Lyr. Add: THE CAMBRIC SHIRT

Can you make me a cambric shirt
Fluma luma laky slomy
Without seam or fine needle work?
Ffom a teaslum tasalum templum
Fluma luma laky sloomy

Can you wash it in a well *
Where water never ran nor water never fell?

Can you dry it on a thorn
That never was seen since Adam was born?

Can you buy me an acre of land
Between the salt water and the sea land?

Can you plow it with a hog's horn
And seed it all down with one pepper corn?

When the fool has done his work
He may come to me and have his shirt.

* Nonsense lines of verse one omitted. Secured by Miss Hamilton in 1910 from Fred Wilkinson who got it from a MS collection made by his grandmother, Eliza Robbins, of Brownington, VT. H. M. Belden, "Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society," 1940 (1973), The Elfin Knight C, p. 3.