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The English and Scottish Popular Ballads

Edited by Francis James Child.

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28
BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE

BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE

[_]

Maidment's North Countrie Garland, 1824, p. 21. Communicated by R. Pitcairn, “from the recitation of a female relative, who had heard it frequently sung in her childhood,” about sixty years before the above date.

1

Burd Ellen sits in her bower windowe,
With a double laddy double, and for the double dow
Twisting the red silk and the blue.
With the double rose and the May-hay

2

And whiles she twisted, and whiles she twan,
And whiles the tears fell down amang.

3

Till once there by cam Young Tamlane:
‘Come light, oh light, and rock your young son.’

4

‘If you winna rock him, you may let him rair,
For I hae rockit my share and mair.’
[OMITTED]

5

Young Tamlane to the seas he's gane,
And a' women's curse in his company's gane.