In the ballad as taken down from Aggett—
"I'll cut my yellow hair away by the root,
And I will clothe myself all in a boy's suit,
And to the college high, I will go afoot."
I have had versions also from Mary Langworthy, Stoke Flemming, in the Hypodorian mode, and from W.S. Vance, Penarth, as sung by an old woman at Padstow in 1863, now dead.
Mr. Sharp gives a version in "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 15.
[5.] Parson Hogg. This was sung by my great-uncle, Thomas Snow, Esq., of Franklyn, near Exeter, when I was a child. I have received it also from Mr. H. Whitfeld, brushmaker, Plymouth. The words may be found, not quite the same, but substantially so, in "The New Cabinet of Love," circ. 1810, as "Doctor Mack." In Oliver's "Comic Songs," circ. 1815, it is "Parson Ogg, the Cornish Vicar." It is also in "The Universal Songster" (1826), ii. p. 348. It is found on Broadsides.
[6.] Cold blows the Wind. The words originally reached me as taken down by the late Mrs. Gibbons, daughter of Sir W.L. Trelawney, Bart., from an old woman, who, in 1830, was nurse in her father's house. Since then we have heard it repeatedly, indeed there are few old singers who do not know it. There are two melodies to which it is sung, that we give here, and that to which "Childe the Hunter" is set in this collection. The ballad is always in a fragmentary condition. The ballad, under the title of "The Unquiet Grave," is in Professor Child's "British Ballads," No. 78. He gives various forms of it. The idea on which it is based is that if a woman has plighted her oath to a man, she is still bound to him, after he is dead, and that he can claim her to follow him into the world of spirits, unless she can redeem herself by solving riddles he sets her. See further on this topic under "The Lover's Tasks," [No. 48]. Verses 8 and 10 are not in the original ballad. I have supplied them to reduce the length and give a conclusion.
[7.] The Sprig of Thyme. Taken down from James Parsons. After the second verse he broke away into "The Seeds of Love." Joseph Dyer, of Mawgan in Pyder, sang the same ballad or song to the same tune, and in what I believe to be the complete form of words—
"O once I had plenty of thyme,
It would flourish by night and by day,
Till a saucy lad came, return'd from the sea,
And stole my thyme away.
"O and I was a damsel fair,
But fairer I wish't to appear;
So I wash'd me in milk, and I clothed me in silk,
And put the sweet thyme in my hair.
"With June is the red rose in bud,
But that was no flower for me,
I plucked the bud, and it prick'd me to blood,
And I gazed on the willow tree.
"O the willow tree it will twist,
And the willow tree it will twine,
I would I were fast in my lover's arms clasp't,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme.
"O it's very good drinking of ale,
But it's better far drinking of wine,
I would I were clasp't in my lover's arms fast,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme."
The song, running as it does on the same theme and in the same metre as "The Seeds of Love," is very generally mixed up with it, and Miss Broadwood calls her version of it, in "English County Songs," p. 58, "The Seeds of Love, or The Sprig of Thyme." The "Seeds of Love" is attributed by Dr. Whittaker, in his "History of Whalley," to Mrs. Fleetwood Habergham, who died in 1703. He says: "Ruined by the extravagance and disgraced by the vices of her husband, she soothed her sorrows by some stanzas yet remembered among the old people of her neighbourhood." See "The New Lover's Garland," B.M. (11,621, b 6); a Northumbrian version in "Northumbrian Minstrelsy," 1882, p. 90; a Scottish version in "Albyn's Anthology," 1816, i. p. 40; a Somersetshire in "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 1; a Yorkshire in Kidson's "Traditional Tunes," p. 69. As the two songs are so mixed up together, I have thought it best to re-write the song.