> June Tabor > Songs > When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen

When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen

[ Roud 5138 ; Ballad Index RcWIWNBS ; trad.]

Jeannie Robertson sang When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen in a recording made by Hamish Henderson in her home in 1953. This was released in 1954 on her Riverside album Songs of a Scots Tinker Lady, in 1959 on her eponymous Topic album Jeannie Robertson, and in 1998 on the Topic anthology Who's That at My Bed Window? (The Voice of the People Volume 10).

June Tabor learned When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen from the singing of Jeannie Robertson and recorded it in 2011 for her second album with the Oysterband, Ragged Kingdom.

Lyrics

June Tabor sings When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen

When I was noo but sweet sixteen
With beauty just a-blooming o,
It's little, little did I think
At nineteen I'de be greeting o.

Chorus (after each verse):

For the ploughboy lads they're gey braw lads
But they're false and they're deceiving o:
For they'll take your all and they'll gang awa
And leave their lasses grieving o.

O I was fond of company
And gave the ploughboys freedom o
To kiss and clap me in the dark
When all my friends were sleeping o.

But if I had kent that I now ken
And taken my mother's bidding o
I wouldn't be sitting by our fireside
Crying hushabye by bairnie o.

It's hushaba for I'm your ma
But the Lord knows who's your daddy o.
So it's girls take care and you beware
Of the ploughboys in the gloamoing o.

greeting: weeping;
gey: very;
braw: handsome;
clap: touch;
ken: know;
bairnie: baby;
gloaming: dusk