> Eliza Carthy and The Kings of Calicutt > Songs > Mother, Go Make My Bed / Flower of Swiss Cottage

Mother, Go Make My Bed / Flower of Swiss Cottage

[ Roud 45 ; Child 65 ; Ballad Index C065 ; trad.]

Eliza Carthy and the Kings of Calicutt (Andi Wells, Barnaby Stradling, Saul Rose and Maclaine Colston) sang Mother, Go Make My Bed followed by the tune Flower of Swiss Cottage on their eponymous album Eliza Carthy and the Kings of Calicutt. This track was reissued in 2003 on Eliza's anthology The Definitive Collection. The original album's sleeve notes comment:

A story about the bearer of bad news, with a tune written for a flower seller, who caught Liza's eye in a traffic jam.

This is a note about the origins of this song which Malcolm Douglas kindly sent to the Mudcat Café thread Child and Waterson/Carthy:

This is a bit complicated. Versions of the song, all pretty similar, seem to have been quite common in the south of England; I don't know where Eliza got hers.

There was some discussion of the song's possible roots in The Journal of the Folk Song Society (vol. III, no. 11, 1907). H.E.D. Hammond thought it primarily derived from Child #65 (Lady Maisry) with some apparent input from #75 (Lord Lovel). Anne Gilchrist considered a Lady Maisry connection unlikely, and inclined toward the Lord Lovel group, though noting, “The elements of ballads are shifting, and no hard and fast line can be drawn between their various groups; at the same time it is well to remember that such an incident as an absent lover returning in haste to his lady does not always belong to the same story.”

Lucy Broadwood was in the Lord Lovel camp, while Cecil Sharp felt that it should be regarded as a fragment of Lady Maisry. I don't know what current thinking on the subject might be, but it's worth mentioning that all the elements of the song appear in a number of others, and are pretty much commonplaces of folk song; though there isn't really any great need to assign it to a “Child” group, Lady Maisry does seem the closer match if one must be made.

Lyrics

“O mother, go and make my bed,
Spread me the milk white sheets,
That I might go and lay down so low
For to see whether I could sleep.”

“Mother, go and tell now,
Go tell your brother's son,
Your true love's sick and she's going to die.
She will die before you can come.”

The first few miles this little boy walked
And the next few miles he ran.
When he came to the broad water's side
He bent his back and he swam.

When he came to the high front door
They were all sat down to meat.
“Well if you knew why I have come to you
Not a single bite more could you eat.”

“Your high castle walls they're not falling down,
Nor are they overthrown.
Your true love's sick and she's going to die,
She will die before you can come.”

Then he said to the little boy,
“Bring me the milk white steed,
That I might go kiss her cherry cherry cheeks
That once they were so sweet.”

The rose and the briar they grew all together
Till they could get no higher.
They grew and they tied a true lover's knot
And the rose wrapped around the sweet briar.

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Garry Gillard.