THE CRUEL MOTHER—Q
[_]
Shropshire Folk-Lore, edited by
Charlotte Sophia Burne, 1883-86, p. 540; “sung by Eliza
Wharton and brothers, children of gipsies, habitually travelling
in North Shropshire and Staffordshire, 13th July,
1885.”
1
There was a lady, a lady of York,
Ri fol i diddle i gee wo
She fell a-courting in her own father's park.
Down by the greenwood side, O
2
She leaned her back against the stile,
There she had two pretty babes born.
3
And she had nothing to lap 'em in,
But she had a penknife sharp and keen.
4
[OMITTED]
There she stabbed them right through the heart.
5
She wiped the penknife in the sludge;
The more she wiped it, the more the blood showed.
6
As she was walking in her own father's park,
She saw two pretty babes playing with a ball.
7
‘Pretty babes, pretty babes, if you were mine,
I'd dress you up in silks so fine.’
8
‘Dear mother, dear mother, [when we were thine,]
You dressed us not in silks so fine.
9
‘Here we go to the heavens so high,
You'll go to bad when you do die.’
