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The Single Man's Warning

[ Roud 4744 ; Ballad Index ReSh095 ; trad.]

The Young Tradition sang The Single Man's Warning in 1967 on their second album, So Cheerfully Round. Heather Wood commented in the album liner notes:

When prowling round Cecil Sharp House I discovered that they have all the Sharp Manuscripts on microfilm. It's a tiring process—his writing is somewhat illegible and the cracks on the film become confused with the lines on which the music is writ—but it can be rewarding. The Single Man's Warning is from this source. It was collected in 1903 from Tom Sprachlan of Hambridge, Somerset. I think Tom must have had matrimonial problems; several of his songs are on this theme. This was a song I thought to sing as a solo, but it was not to be. One of the trials of being in a group, I suppose.

Compare to this Martin Carthy's I Was a Young Man and Tony Rose's longer version Poor Man's Sorrow.

Lyrics

The Young Tradition sing The Single Man's Warning

Come all you young men that are going to be wed:
Don't be caught like a bird with a small piece of bread.
I will have you be careful in choosing a wife
For when you are trapped you'll remember it through life.
    Right fol di diddle di do, fol di diddle day

Oh when you are wed and a squaller is born
A poor man may work his fingers to the bone.
He hears a midwife and a nurse, and a gossiping crew
And a poor man can hardly pull himself through.
    Right fol … (chorus after each verse)

When I come home to breakfast, to breakfast at eight,
There's the devil of a spark of a fire in the grate
And the turk of a sign of a breakfast for me
And my wife she lies a-snoring like a pig in the sty.

If I asked her to rise, she will fly in a pet
And bawl out, “By God, well, there's time enough yet.
Get your breakfast yourself and be off to your work
Amd don't just bide here for to idle and lurk.”

When dinner time comes to my home I repair
But a hundred to one if I find my wife there.
She's a-gossipin' around with the child on her knee
And the turk of a sign of a dinner for me.

Oh if I could be but single again
The finest of ladies would never me trepan.
Single I'd remain all the days of my life,
How happy is he that avoided a wife.

Acknowledgements

For more information on this song see the Mudcat Caf'e thread Single Man's Warning.