The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #126447 Message #3023266
Posted By: Jim Dixon
04-Nov-10 - 07:52 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Blackberry Blossom
Subject: Lyr Add: THE BLACKBERRY BLOSSOM (A P Graves)
Being musically illiterate myself, or nearly so, I will leave it to others to figure out whether this is the same tune or a different one.
From Irish Folk-Songs the words by Alfred Perceval Graves; the airs arranged by Charles Wood (London: Boosey & Co., 1897), page 37. There is musical notation there for piano and one voice.
THE BLACKBERRY BLOSSOM. Air.—"The Blackberry Blossom."
When I was but a wee shy boy, My mother's pride, my father's joy, My hands and mouth had full employ When blackberries grew ripe; And oft my mammy she would squeeze The thorns from out my arms and knees, And my good dad to give me ease, Put by his fav'rite pipe; And even since I've become a man And dressed on quite a diff'rent plan, I've still gone carrying the can, When blackberries grew sweet. Yes! Trampling through the bramble brakes, I'd court the keenest pains and aches For two or three fair colleens' sakes Whose names I'll not repeat.
Till Norah of the amber hair, Who'd been my partner here and there, Around about and ev'rywhere, When blackberries came in; When I just tried, with too much haste, The richer, rarer fruit to taste, That on her lips was goin' to waste, She tosses up her chin, And marches by me night and morn, Her grey eyes only glancing scorn, Regardless of the bitter thorn That in my heart she's rooting. Yet, somehow, something in my mind Keeps murm'ring, when she's most unkind: "Have patience! She'll make friends, you'll find, Ere blackberries finish fruiting— Ere blackberries finish fruiting."