The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #7608   Message #3059403
Posted By: Jim Dixon
22-Dec-10 - 12:43 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Boar and the Fox (Battlefield Band)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE BOAR HE WOULD A-WOOING GO (James Hogg
From "A Story of Good Queen Bess" by the Ettrick Shepherd [James Hogg], in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 29, No. 179, April, 1831, page 581:

1. The boar he would a-wooing go,
To a mistress of command,
And he's gone away to the lady fox,
And proffer'd her his hand.
'You're welcome here, Lord Bruin,' she says,
'You're welcome here to me;
But ere I lie into your den,
You must grant me favours three.'

2. 'Yes—favours three I will grant to thee,
Be these whate'er they may,
For there is not a beast in the fair forest
That dares with me to play.
Then bid me bring the red deer's heart,
Or nombles of the hind,
To be a bridal supper meet*,
Fitting my true love's mind.'

3. 'O no, O no,' said the lady fox,
'These are no gifts for me;
But there are three birds in fair Scotland,
All sitting on one tree;
And I must have the heart of one,
And the heads of the other two.
And then I will go, for well or woe.
To be a bride to you.'

4. Now woe be to that vile she-fox,
The worst of this world's breed,
For the bonny, bonny birds were reaved away,
And doom'd by her to bleed;
And she tied the boar up by the neck,
And he hung till he was dead.

[* Some later editions of Hogg's works have "meat."]