The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #19113   Message #193807
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
12-Mar-00 - 12:58 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Brimbledon Fair / Young Ramble-Away
Subject: RE: as I was walking to wimbledon ? fair
Gypsy:  "Scarborough Fair" is a completely different song!

Amos:  "Strawberry Fair" (also unrelated to "Brimbledon Fair"/ "Rambleaway") was collected by the Rev. Sabine Baring Gould in a Devon pub; he re-wrote the text -in the process turning a perfectly good song into what A. L. Lloyd described in 1967 as (a) "mawkish thing of buttercups and daisies that has wearied generations of schoolchildren for the last half-century"- because he felt that the double entendre in the original was unsuitable for publication!  It's probably 18th century rather than Elizabethan.

Malcolm