Lyr Add: Gardner Lad (original)

Subject: Lyr Add: YOUNG MAN'S ANSWER TO...GARDEN OF THYME
From: Bruce O.
Date: 18 Mar 98 - 10:54 AM

Here's the original version of "The Gardner Lad", Child #219.

Pepys 5.246

An Excellent new Song, Called, The
Young-Mans Answer
To the MAIDS
Garden of TYME,

Let no Young-maidens shew their proud disdain,
In slighting Lovers when they're not to blame,
Least by their haughty Pride as I may tell,
They slip their Youth, and so lead Apes in Hell.

To a pleasant New Tune.

Maids that are fair and young,
why should you thus complain,
Against a Batchellors smooth tongue
when Love is all their aim.

If we should curse or swear,
or surly to you be,
O then you justly might forbear
a Young-mans company.

You say a young man went
into your Garden fine,
And there unto your discontent
he pluckt up all your time.

I blame him for the same,
he might have spared some,
Or for the time hat he did take,
plant others in the room.

Come pritty Lass I pray
let me your Garden view,
And what fine flowers you do want,
ile plant them o'er a new.

And if you'l try me once,
I doubt not but you'l say,
I thank you heartily young man,
pray come another day.

And in your Garden fine
a Fountain there does flow,
With pritty bushes all a-round,
that Fountain too does grow.

Fair Maiden let me in,
and then you need not fear,
But I the bushes fine will trim,
your Fountain too will clear.

And if your time I take,
ile give you in return,
Cornations of the better sort,
and Flowers of the Sun.

And for your Fountain too,
thus further I can tell,
Ile put in pritty Fishes there,
will please you wondrous well.

And in this Pond they'll breed,
for to increase your store,
and if you once but let me in,
you'l nere deny me more.

at length the young Maid then
consented to my mind,
But said withal, her heart should break
if I should prove untrue.

When I came to the Garden-door,
said she you'l me undo,
and steal away my precious time,
and leave me nought but Rue.

No no, then I reply'd,
my pritty Maid ne're fear,
For now the Bargain is fast ty'd,
ile stay from Year to Year.

Your Fountain ile new stock,
your Garden ile new plant;
There's nothing that is requisite,
my pritty Maid shall want.

Now Maids be ruled by me,
nere use Young-men unkind,
But take the first that comes to hand,
if he be to your mind.

Printed by and for A[lex]. M[ilbourne]. 1696

I trust you now understand what the Gardner lad meant to plant, and what is meant by 'Garden of Tyme', 'Seeds of Love', Fountain, and so on. [The old naval equivalent to planting in the garden of thyme is the 'shot twixt wind and water']

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Gardner Lad (original)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 12:25 PM

The original broadside, from the Pepys collection, can be seen at The English Ballad Broadside Archive at the University of California-Santa Barbara.