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My Bonny Cuckoo

[trad. arr. Shirley and Dolly Collins]

Shirley Collins recorded this song three times. Her first rendering of My Bonny Cuckoo is on the 1960 album False True Lovers. A 1966 demo recording of My Bonny Cuckoo was included in March 2006 on her CD Snapshots. Finally, she sang Bonny Cuckoo in 1969 on her and her sister Dolly's album Anthems in Eden. This recording was also included in her anthology Within Sound.

Shirley Collins commented in the latter album's notes:

We sang this at home, in three-part harmony—Mum, Dolly and me. When Alan Lomax visited us in Hastings back in the 1950s he had tears in his eyes as he listened to this song.

And Alan Lomax commented in the original album's notes:

Published in The Clarendon Song Book, Oxford University Press, and learnt by the Misses Collins in their school choir in Hastings. My Bonny Cuckoo is perhaps the most charming of the many songs which celebrate the cuckoo, the harbinger of spring and the natural symbol of cuckolds.

Lyrics

My bonny cuckoo, I tell thee true
That through the groves I'll rove with you;
I'll rove with you until the next spring
And then my cuckoo shall sweetly sing.

The ash and the hazel shall mourning say,
My bonny cuckoo, don't go away;
Don't go away, but tarry here,
And sing for us throughout the year.
Cuckoo, cuckoo, pray tarry here,
And make the spring last all the year.