Mr. Kimber, the leader of the Headington Morris, could only give us the first verse of their song, which, however, is quite different from the Irish words:—
When I go to Marlow Fair
With the ribbons in my hair,
All the boys and girls declare,
Here comes the rigs o' Marlow.
Mallow is in County Cork and was a fashionable watering-place in the eighteenth century, when it was known as the "Irish Bath." Croker says that the young men of that fashionable water-drinking town were proverbially called "the rakes of Mallow," and he adds: "A set of pretty pickles they were, if the song descriptive of their mode of life, here recorded after the most delicate oral testimony, is not very much over-coloured."
Neither the Oxfordshire nor the Gloucestershire Morris-men, from both of whom we recovered this tune, had probably heard of "Mallow"; it was natural enough, therefore, to substitute "Marlow," which, of course, they know very well.
"COUNTRY GARDENS."
This is the prototype of "The Vicar of Bray," and Mr. Kidson tells us that he has it in an old book of airs under the more ancient title. It is also called "The Country Garden" in Playford's "Dancing Master," and in Chappell's "National English Airs," Nos. 25 and 26. Chappell gives it in 3-4 time, and remarks that it then becomes "a plaintive love ditty instead of a sturdy and bold air."