And I have got the bonniest lass
In a’ the North Countrie.’
219. The Gardener.
P. 212. Rev. S. Baring-Gould has pointed me to a printed copy of this ballad, considerably corrupted, to be sure, but also considerably older than the traditional versions. It is blended at the beginning with a “Thyme” song, which itself is apt to be mixed up with ‘I sowed the seeds of love.’ The second stanza is from the “Thyme” song; the third is a traditional variation of a stanza in ‘I sowed the seeds of love.’ (See the piece which follows this.) The ballad begins with the fourth stanza, and the fifth is corrupted by being transferred from the gardener to the maid. Mr Baring-Gould has lately taken down copies of the “Thyme” song in the west of England. See one in Songs and Ballads of the West, No 7, and the note thereto in the preface to Part IV of that work, p. xv; also Campbell’s Albyn’s Anthology, I, 40, Bruce and Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy, p. 90, and Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 521 f. Rev. S. Baring-Gould has given me two copies, one from recitation, the other from “a broadside published by Bebbington, Manchester, Brit. Mus., 1876. d., A Collection of Songs and Broadsides, I, 264.”
Five Excellent New Songs. Edinburgh. Printed and sold by William Forrest, at the head of the Cowgate, 1766. British Museum, 11621. b. 6 (8).
1
The wakeing all the winter night,
And the tippling at the wine,
And the courting of a bonny lass,