> Steeleye Span > Songs > The Old Maid in the Garrett

Steeleye Span: The Old Maid in the Garrett

[ Roud 802 ; Ballad Index R364 ; trad.]

Steeleye Span recorded The Old Maid in the Garrett for their album Time. The sleevenotes commented:

Definitely to be taken with a large pint of salt, this is probably the first (and last) time that this sung has been sung by women!

Lyrics

I was told by my Aunt
I was told by my Mother
That going to a wedding
Is the making of another
Well if this be so
Then I'll go without a bidding
Oh kind Providence
Won't you send me to a wedding

Chorus (after each verse)

And it's, Oh dear me
How will it be
If I die an old maid
in a garret

Now there's my sister Jean
She's not handsome or good-looking
Scarcely sixteen
And a fellow she was courting
Now she's twenty-four
She's a son and a daughter
Here am I, forty-four
And I've never had an offer

I can cook and I can sew
I can keep a house right tidy
Rise up in the morning
And get the breakfast ready
There's nothing in this wide world
That makes my heart so cheery
As a wee fat man
To call me his own deary

Oh come landsman, come townsman
Come tinker or come tailor
Come fiddler, come dancer
Come ploughman or come sailor
Come rich man, come poor man
Come fool or come witty
Come any man at all
Won't you marry out of pity?

Tunes

They say that the women are
Worse than the men
They go down to Hell
And they're thrown out again.