Man speaks.
Can you make me a cambrick shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Without any seam or needlework?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
Can you wash it in yonder well? Parsley, etc.,
Where never spring water or rain ever fell.
Can you dry it on yonder thorn,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born?
Maiden speaks.
Now you have asked me questions three,
I hope you will answer as many for me.
Can you find me an acre of land,
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
[Pg 49] Can you plow it with a ram's horn,
And sow it all over with peppercorn?
Can you reap it with a sickle of leather,
And bind it up with a peacock's feather?
When you have done and finished your work,
Then come to me for your cambrick shirt.
(c. 1783, p. 10.)
On the face of it, it hardly seems likely that this version is descended from the romantic ballad.
The tasks that are here imposed on the man are set also in the form of a boast in a nursery song, in which they have so entirely lost their meaning as to represent a string of impossibilities.
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing sing, sing sing,
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing holly, go whistle and sing.
I ploughed it with a ram's horn,
And sowed it with one pepper corn.
I harrowed it with a bramble bush,
And reaped it with a little pen knife.
I got the mice to carry it to the mill,
And thrashed it with a goose's quill.
I got the cat to carry it to the mill,
The miller swore he would have her paw,
And the cat she swore she would scratch his face.
(N. & Q., VII. 8.)
Another nursery piece is recorded by Halliwell which, in simple form relates concerning Billy my son the sequence of events which underlies the famous romantic ballad of Lord Randal.[27] The story is current also in Scotland relating to The Croodin Doo (1870, p. 51); it was told also some eighty years ago in Lincolnshire, of King Henry my son (N. & Q., 8, VI, 427). The romantic ballad in five verses, as told of Lairde Rowlande, relates how he came from the woods weary with hunting and expecting death. He had been at his true love's, where he ate of the food which poisoned his warden and his dogs. In the nursery version the tragedy is told in the following simple form:—
Where have you been to-day, Billy my son?
Where have you been to-day, my only man?—
I've been a wooing, mother; make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and fain would lie down.