paroles de chanson The Cruel Mother - Shirley Collins

The Cruel Mother Shirley Collins (child 20)
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Published on Jan 18, 2010
The Cruel Mother
Shirley Collins
False True Lovers

Child Ballad #20
A woman falls in love with her father's clerk and become pregnant.
She delivers the baby (usually 2)
In the greenwood and kills them there.
On her way home she passes little children playing and wishes they
Were her own. She tells the children how she would dress them finely,
They respond that when they were hers she
Did not do so, but instead murdered them.

A minister's daughter in the north
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
She's fallen in love with her father's clerk,
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

He courted her for a year and a day,
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
Till her the young man did betray.
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

She leaned her back up against a tree
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And there the tear did blind her eye.
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

She leaned her back up against a thorn
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And that her bonny boys she has born.
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

She's taken out her little pen-knife
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And she has twined them of their life.
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

She laid them beneath some marble stone
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
Thinking to go a maiden home.
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

As she looked over her father's wall
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
She saw her two bonny boys playing ball.

"Oh bonny boys, if you were mine
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
I would dress you in silk so fine."
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

"Oh cruel mother, when we were thine
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
We didn't see aught of your silk so fine."
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

"Oh bonny boys, come tell to me
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
What sort of death I'll have to die?"
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

"Seven years as a fish in the flood,
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And seven years a bird in the wood."
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

"Seven years a tongue in the warning bell,
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And seven years in the flames of hell."

"Welcome, welcome, fish in the flood,
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
And welcome, welcome, bird in the wood."
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.

"Welcome, tongue to the warning bell,
- Hey the rose and the lindsay-o,
But God keep me from the flames of hell."
- Down by the greenwood side-i-o.