Georgie

[ Roud 90 ; Child 209 ; Ballad Index C209 ; trad.]

Levy Smith sang Georgie in a recording by Mike Yates near Epsom, Surrey from May 1974 on the 1975 Topic album Songs of the Open Road and on the 1998 Topic anthology My Father's the King of the Gypsies (The Voice of the People Volume 11).

Martin Carthy sang Georgie on his 1998 album Signs of Life. and live at Ruskin Mill in December 2004. and live in studio in July 2006 for the DVD Guitar Maestros. Martin Carthy commented in the original recording's sleeve notes:

Hamish Henderson, poet, songwriter, collector, doyen of the School of Scottish Studies, champion of humanity in general and imagination in particular, wrote in the '60s that the folk revival depended for its continued existence on its capacity to throw up fresh thinkers. At the risk of having an immediate degree conferred on me from the university of the bleedin' obvious, I'll say that doesn't apply simply to folkies. A pretty good illustration of the way the craft of songwriting has broadened as ordinary people write about extra-ordinary events is the Bee Gees' song New York Mine Disaster, 1941 which, whether or not it refers to an actual event, is a great piece of collective imagination. Similar forces are at work among the many gypsy singers and musicians recorded by Mike Yates in the past twenty or thirty years. Georgie is a song that I have known for forty years, but I was taken completely unawares when I heard it sung by Levi Smith in the '70s, and it's the basis of what I sing hear. The experience was similar to hearing the Yarmouth fisherman Sam Larner in the 1950's, which confronted everything I had thought made a musical sense, and changed it.

Compare this to Martin Carthy singing Geordie on his album Crown of Horn.

Lyrics

Martin Carthy sings Georgie

Once I had such a good little boy
A pretty boy quick as any
He would run five miles in one half an hour
A letter to pardon my Georgie

For what has Georgie done on Shooter's Hill
Was it stealing or murder of any
Oh he stole sixteen of the lord judge's deer
And we sold them down under the valley

Oh saddle em up cries my lily-white breast
Oh saddle me up cries my pony
With bright guns in his hand and a sword at his side
Would you spare me the life of my Georgie

And Georgie's fathered six babes loved
There's a seventh one into my body
But it's with it part with all I have got
If you'll spare me the life of my Georgie

And George shall be hanged in the frames of gold
For the frames of gold you won't find many
But it's with it part with all I have got
If you'll spare me the life of my Georgie

For what has Georgie done on Shooter's Hill
Was it stealing or murder of any
Oh he stole sixteen of the lord judge's deer
And we sold them down under the valley

Wish you was stalled all in the grove
All in the grove standing ready
With bright guns in your hand and a sword at your side
I'd fight you for the life of my Georgie

Once I had such a good little boy
A pretty boy quick as any
He would run five miles in one half an hour
A letter to pardon my Georgie

Notes

Mudcat discussion of "Geordie" [sic]

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Garry Gillard, with help from Wolfgang Hell.