ADD: Weary the Tide/Spring Tide Rising (Davenport)

Subject: Lyr Add: Weary the Tide (Paul Davenport)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Mar 23 - 06:02 PM

https://www.hallamtrads.co.uk/ewExternalFiles/Songs%20from%20the%20Sea.pdf

Weary the Tide, or Spring Tide Rising (Paul Davenport)

Weary the Tide

Oh Billy, you are my darling
Oh Billy, my own dear lad
Will you meet with me by moonlight
You’re the only love I ever had
Come meet with me down on the seashore
Come to me down by the sea
And I will be your own true love
Under the trysting tree

Weary the tide comes up, weary the tide goes down
Rises and falls by the light of the moon ‘til it washes away the town
She met with her own true lover
She met with him ‘neath the moon
By the tree that stands in the water
But she granted her favour too soon
Oh Billy now don’t you dare leave me
A promise you made unto me
And you carved it with flint in the moonlight
On the trunk of the trysting tree

But he’s laughed as she lay there a-weeping
Ah, your favour you gifted too soon
Where’s your witness to what I had promised
Under the light of the moon?
Then he’s sailed him away to the northward
Where Kessingland shone on the lee
And he’s taken his boat to the fishing
Never thought of the trysting tree

But she screamed as the tide was turning
Oh Billy you shalln’t leave me
And her love turned to hatred a-burning
And her heart grew as cold as can be
The pain it prick’d sharp as a thistle
As she turned and she faced out to sea
Put fingers to lips and she’s whistled
Under the trysting tree

There’s a gale has sprung out of the Lowlands
And it howled like a poor hell-bound soul
And it battered from Southwold to Yarmouth
Left scarcely a vessel whole
Oh Billy it cried, Come find me
Oh Billy return unto me
For the promise you made, it shall bind ye
Unto the trysting tree

Cold was the spring tide rising
Cold was the ice on the broad
Cold were the sightless eyes gazing
As she waits for the lad she adored
Small wavelets carried him to her
Lifted his head on her knee
And the sea-wrack held fast and entwined them
Unto the trysting tree



Notes: Weary the Tide
In my early childhood in the 1950s, I recall that, every morning the milk was delivered by an amazon called Dorothy. She dragged a cart which was stacked high with metal milk crates and she sang or whistled as she walked. The house opposite was occupied by the Jagger family and the father, Jack, was a ‘sparks’ or wireless operator on the trawlers. On one memorable occasion the taxi came to take himself and Jimmy Milne, a Scot who had the same line of work, to the dock for their fishing trip. As they went to the taxi door, Dorothy arrived whistling away without a care in the world.
It was years later that I found out the reason for what happened next.
The two men began arguing for what I thought was no reason. Jimmy stormed off leaving Jack to pay for the taxi. In the event the transport left empty. My mate John was Jack’s son but he never said anything and seemed to regard the event as normal and unremarkable. I
do remember it was a Friday.
Of course Jimmy, as a Scot was only too aware of the dangers of pigs, black cats, hares and whistling women, most especially, on a Friday. The famed Witches of Dunbar had whistled up storms and this superstition lies at the root of this song.
Just north of what is left of the village of Covehithe, Suffolk there is a strange phenomenon, a tree that stands in the sea. The trunk is carved with the names of what one presumes are young lovers. Not particularly unusual although the flints, driven into the
whitened wood, almost like votive offerings add a particularly strange air to this beautful beach.
The following song unites these folkloric ‘facts’ in a typically 19th century setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6FRjkslM4