Folk Songs from Somerset

Folk Songs from Somerset is the third movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite. It consists of several different English folk songs that originated in Somerset

Blow Away the Morning Dew

Blow Away the Morning Dew is the first folk song to feature in the movement. It is also known as The Baffled Knight, and is child ballad 112. The earliest printed version of the song appears in Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609) as "The Overcurteous Knight".

Lyrics

There was a farmer's son,
Kept sheep all on the hill;
And he walk'd out one May morning
To see what he could kill.
Chorus
And sing blow away the morning dew
The dew, and the dew.
Blow away the morning dew,
How sweet the winds do blow.
He looked high, he looked low,
He cast an under look;
And there he saw a fair pretty maid
Beside the wat'ry brook.
Chorus
Cast over me my mantle fair
And pin it o'er my gown;
And, if you will, take hold my hand,
And I will be your own.
Chorus
If you come down to my father's house
Which is walled all around,
And, you shall have a kiss from me
And twenty thousand pound.
Chorus
He mounted on a milk white steed
And she upon another;
And then they rode along the lane
Like sister and like brother.
Chorus
As they were riding on alone,
They saw some pooks of hay.
O is not this a very pretty place
For girls and boys to play?
Chorus
But when they came to her father's gate,
So nimble she popped in:
And said: There is a fool without
And here's a maid within.
Chorus
We have a flower in our garden,
We call it Marigold:
And if you will not when you may,
You shall not when you wolde.
Chorus

ee also

*Ralph Vaughan Williams
*English Folk Song Suite
*Seventeen Come Sunday
*My Bonny Boy

References

[http://www.contemplator.com/child/morndew.html The Contemplator page with MIDI file]