The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #17060   Message #2903944
Posted By: Jim Dixon
10-May-10 - 03:40 PM
Thread Name: Lyr/Tune Add: Banks of Sweet Primroses
Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Add: Banks of Sweet Primroses
From England Not Dead; And, Turk and Briton; also containing Scenes of Cumberland By John Malone Dagnall (London: published by the author, 1878), page 60:

[These lines are quoted in a much longer poem, "Scenes of Cumberland."]

As I walk'd out one summer's morning,
To view the fields and take the air,
Down by the banks of the sweet primroses,
There I beheld a most lovely fair.

Three long steps I took up to her,
Not knowing her as she passed by.
I stepped up to her, thinking to view her.
She appeared to me so modest, shy.

I said, "Fair maid, where are you going?
Oh, tell me dear the cause of your grief.
'Twill make you as happy as any lady.
Afford your heart no small relief."

"Stand off! Stand off! You are deceitful.
You are deceitful, it is plain.
The cause enough to make me wander.
You can no comfort give. 'tis all in vain.

"I'll go down in some lonely valley.
No man on earth shall e'er me find,
Where pretty birds shall change their voices,
And zephyrs turn to boisterous wind.

"Come all you maidens who go a-courting,
Pray give your attention to what I say,
For there's many a dark and cloudy morning,
Turns out to be a sunshiny day."