English song about marriage warnings

Subject: English song about marriage warnings
From:
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 09:57 AM

I'm working on a project which is collecting songs from all the different cultures and ethnic groups represented in the city of Derby, UK. As part of the project we have also been asked to find some "equivalent" English folk songs.

We have collected two songs -- one from Hungary and one from Zimbabwe -- which have very similar themes, and I was hoping to find an equivalent English folk song with the same sort of meaning.

The Hungarian one is:

1. The mother does not keep
    Her pretty daughter for herself.

2. She brings her up in her arms
    Then lets her go on her wings.

3. And then she watches from a distance
    As someone else scolds and beats her

And the Zimbabwean one is a wedding song:

The first part of the song is sung by the bride's family and says
something like: "If he beats you or or treats you badly, you can tell
your mother and you can come back home".

So, both songs are about marriage with a bit of beating in there!

I've searched high and low, but can't seem to find anything remotely in the same vein. Any ideas?

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Paul Burke
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 10:31 AM

I don't know of any direct warnings, but "Sorry the Day I was married
", Do you love an apple?
, and Leon Rosselson's "Don't Get Married Girls" spring to mind.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 10:35 AM

"Sorry the day I was married".

From the male point of view is (I think called) "I was a young man".

You can use the lyrics search. Put in married and search the database and/or search threads.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 03:11 PM

These above two are different songs, though both with the same message, sung from the man's point of view. The best performance I know of "Sorry" is, without a doubt, Mike Waterson's, and Maddy & (? I think) Gay Woods also did it on (???) Hark The Village Wait. The tune is played instrumentally as a trad slip jig in Ireland, called "Ellen Grady" in O'Neill's but something else by the musos here - a girl's name (Caitlín Hayes or similar, in Irish). Sorry to be so abysmally vague!

The best version I ever heard of "When I Was A Young Man" is by Mike's bro-in-law Martin Carthy, duetting with John Kirkpatrick on the LP Albion Sunrise. Magnificent stuff.

These songs have two very different melodies & rhythms, as well as words. One is in a major key (flat seventh) in 9/8; the other in a minor key with a 4/4/ feel.   Both are brilliant IMNSHO.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Sorcha
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 03:18 PM

I Wish I Was A Single Girl
Meg (sic) Never Wed An Old Man
Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 03:37 PM

Mickey's Warning (Blue Bleezin Blind Drunk)
An Old Man Came Courting Me
Sandgate Girl's Lament

Not exactly warnings, more like didn't heed any warnings that may have been given outside the song and now sorry for it.

Linn

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Zany Mouse
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 03:56 PM

Don't Get Married Girls.

Brilliant song!

Rhiannon

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 05:10 PM

And then there are a ton of <><><> before we get married lets go for a ride and Ill dunp you in a grave Ive been digging all night or throw you in the river theame.

            Very nice when the bride gets away unhurt .. " Polly Pritty Polly Come go along with me .. " Or    Ohmi Wise   " and he through her in deep water where he knew she would drown"

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Tootler
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 06:13 PM

How about this one? - similar theme to Sandgate Girl's Lament.

I'll make for your daddy his favourite meal
Though he's a long time away on the keel
We'll dance a slow waltz and a homecoming reel
and I'll have a kiss from my Johnny

Chorus
Hey away, my own sleepy child
Hey away, lie still for a while
Hey away, just dream with a smile
For tomorrow we'll both see your daddy

My little one you've got your daddy's fine chin
Blue piercing eyes that show you are his kin
And though you're still small, well you know how to sing
Since you belong to my Johnny

Johnny he once was a clever young lad
Last night he drunk all the money we had
Early on he didn't act too bad
He looked as fine as any

Chorus

Your tired rosy cheeks they are dimpled and round
And like your dad you are sturdy and round
You're worth more to me than pennies and pounds
You're altogether bonny

When daddy gets drunk he will take up a knife
And shout and he'll threaten that he'll take my life
Who would not be a keelman's wife
To have a man like Johnny

Chorus

It'll soon be time to get breakfast fried
I'll sweep the ash from the coaly fireside
Then on your daddy's knee you'll take a ride
When he comes home to Mammy

Chorus

From CD "Two Year Winter" by Bill Jones

Words adapted from "Sandgate Wife's Nurse Song" by Robert Nunn (1808 - 1853)

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Bert
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 07:09 PM

I wish I was single again

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 08:32 PM

From the old MIT Outing Club Songbook:



SINGLE GIRL, MARRIED GIRL



Single girl, single girl, she's going dressed fine,

Oh, she's going dressed fine.

Married girl, married girl, she wears just any kind,

Oh, she wears just any kind.



Single girl, single girl, she goes to the store and buys,

Married girl, married girl, she rocks the cradle and cries.



Single girl, single girl, she's going where she please,

Married girl, married girl, baby on her knees.



About 40 years ago I saw a Polish movie (title forgotten) about a nun who was possessed by the devil. It had a song in it in which the rigors of convent life were compared favorably with those of marriage to a brutal husband.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: This is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil. :||

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 09:07 PM

There's Willie Scott's 'Bound to be a Row'

"I do all my life to please my wife
- there's bound to be a row"

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GUEST,Scotus (minus cookie)
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 09:09 PM

That last one (Willie Scott) as me!

Jack Beck

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Pete_Standing
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 08:40 AM

The original Song Links (Fellside Records) has "Baby Lie Easy" by Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher and its Oz counterpart "The Wee One" by Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton. The story line is basically, boy marries girl, she continues to go out on the raz whilst he's left at home looking after the baby, but the twist is that it's not his.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: gnomad
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 06:48 PM

Robert Southey's The Well of St Keyne (tune Helston Floral Dance) tells how the first one of a married couple to drink from the magical well will permanently gain the upper hand in the marriage.

The man telling this to the stranger regrets that though he dashed to the well on his wedding day, he was outwitted by his bride, who took a bottle into church. I reckon he had lost before the banns were published.

I will try and dig up the lyrics.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From:
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 06:53 PM

Thanks so much for all the suggestions so far. Many of them I'd already found, but many are new to me.

Sadly none are really what I'm looking for!!! Maybe there are no warnings from mothers or families against wife beating in the English-speaking world! Or maybe it was a taboo subject.

I'm searching for songs, probably sung at weddings, which specifically mention or warn against husbands beating or ill-treating wives once they're married -- not just infidelity, or warnings against getting married at all (although I do go along with that!!).

Perhaps I'm asking the impossible?

Chris
Coventry, UK

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 07:18 PM

What about husband beating as in "The Bald-Headed End Of The Broom" which has been sung all over British Isles but may originally have been Irish.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 25 Jan 06 - 05:04 PM

In Keith Marsden's song "Willy 'Ole Lad" a father warns his daughter not to marry a man he fears will be a gambler and will be nasty when he comes home drunk. (The "Willy 'Ole" is part of a woollen mill in which the work is very unpleasant.)
I don't know whether the song has ever been recorded, but it can be found in the book "Picking Sooty Blackberries", ISBN 1 871318 01 7, published by Fellsongs Music Publishing.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Zany Mouse
Date: 25 Jan 06 - 10:48 PM

I heard a song some years ago which impressed me greatly. Sadly I don't know who it is by or what it is called, but I'm sure there's a Catter out there who knows.

The general story line is that the wife gets fed up with her husband's bad behaviour and sews him up in a blanket and then beats him. Does that ring any bells?

Rhiannon

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 25 Jan 06 - 11:18 PM

A Stitch in Time (DT file, from an unattributed source, lacking proper credits). Also various forum threads, in at least one of which I provided the appropriate writer credits.

Not really relevant to this discussion, though.

There are plenty of modern songs like that on the subject, but I can't think of anything traditional in the English language (of course there are plenty in mainland Europe). Just possibly, you may get somewhere if you look into occupational traditions (Gerald Porter is the authority on that, I think) - some songs from that context might possibly serve. The kind that go with work-based pre-marriage customs among female workers, rather than their families.

Everything else that has been suggested seems to be in answer to a completely different question that Chris didn't ask. Well meant, though predictable (all those songs have been discussed here before, generally in more detail); but essentially irrelevant.

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: gnomad
Date: 26 Jan 06 - 07:10 PM

Guestm HughM: Willy 'Ole Lad is recorded on the Cockersdale cd "Doin' the Manch" (Fellside, FECD72) though I understand it was not on the original LP of the same name, but a later re-discovered archive recording.

There is a later version on "Picking Sooty Blackberries" a cockersdale own label cd CR CD 001

Subject: RE: English song about marriage warnings
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 26 Jan 06 - 09:42 PM

You're right; it wasn't on the original LP. For previous discussions and lyric postings, see

Willy 'ole lad
Clogs (Willy 'Ole Lad)
Willy 'Ole Lad Parody

Still not what Chris asked for, though.