“Come All You Fair and Tender Girls”

Description

Willie courts the narrator, asks her to go with him. She consents, but when they are far from home, he sends her back, saying it's his nature to ramble

Supplemental text

Come All You Fair and Tender Girls
  Partial text(s)

          *** A ***

Come All You Fair and Handsome Girls

From Dorothy Scarborough, A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains,
pp. 322-323. Supplied by Ethel Owen, Dog Pen Branch, Council,
Virginia, from a text in her mother's collection. The lineation
is Scarborough's.

Come all you fair and handsome girls
  take warning by a friend.
If you want the ways of this wide world
  upon my word depend.

The mind of women they are weak,
  But the mind of men are strong.
oh, never listen to what they say,
  are (sic.) they will tell you something wrong.

When I was in my sixteenth year
  Little Willie said to me,
if I would run away with him,
  his loving wife I would be.

(5 additional stanzas plus a half-stanza)

Notes

Is it possible this is a ballad from which "Fair and Tender Ladies" has descended, with the narrative removed? It has warning verses at the beginning, although not those normally associated with "Fair and Tender Ladies." -PJS

Cross references

• cf. "The Fair Flower of Northumberland" [Child 9] (plot)
• cf. "Fair and Tender Ladies" (lyrics)

Recordings

• Banjo Bill Cornett, "Sweet Willie" (on MMOK, MMOKCD)
• Green Maggard, "Come All You Fair and Handsome Girls" (AFS, 1934; on KMM)

References

1. SharpAp 103, "Come All You Young and Handsome Girls" (1 text, 1 tune)
2. Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 321-326, "Come All You Fair and Handsome Girls" (5 texts, with local titles "Come All You Fair and Handsome Girls," (no title), "Fair and Handsome Girls," "Fair and Handsome Girls," (no title); the "E" text appears likely to be some other song, of the vast "Rye Whiskey/Wagoner's Lad" type; 1 tune on p. 442)
3. Wyman-Brockway II, p. 80, "Come All You Young and Handsome Girls" (1 text, 1 tune)
4. Cohen/Seeger/Wood, p. 49, "Sweet Willie" (1 text, 1 tune)
5. ST WB2080 (Partial)
6. Roud #3606
7. BI, WB2080