> Steeleye Span > Songs > Tim Hart and Friends: Widdicombe Fair
> Cyril Tawney > Songs > Johnny Greyman and His Grey Mare

Widdicombe Fair / Johnny Greyman and His Grey Mare

[ Roud 137 ; Ballad Index K308 ; trad.]

Cyril Tawney sang Johnny Greyman and His Grey Mare in 1970 on his Argo LP Cyril Tawney Sings Children’s Songs from Devon and Cornwall. He commented in his liner notes:

I found this among the Baring-Gould manuscripts. No source is indicated but presumably it is from either Devon or Cornwall. I have also recorded another version from Molly Spooner of Yelverton, Devon. An interesting poser for folklorists: Is this merely a simplified nursery version of the well-known Widdicombe Fair or an older, more primitive form of the song?

Brian Golbey sang Widdicombe Fair in 1983 on Tim Hart and Friends' album Drunken Sailor and Other Kids Songs. This track is one of the two not reissued on the compilation CD Favourite Nursery Rhymes and Other Children's Songs.

Tom Brown sang Widdlecombe Fair at home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, in the mid-1980s. This recording was included in 1998 on the Topic anthology First I'm Going to Sing You a Ditty (The Voice of the People Series, Volume 7).

Lyrics

Brian Golbey sings Widdicombe Fair

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare,
All along, down along, out along lee.
For I want for to go to Widdicombe Fair.

Chorus (after each verse)

With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer,
Peter Gurney, Peter Davey,
Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.

And when shall I see my old grey mare again?
All along, down along, out along lee.
By Friday night or Saturday noon.

Then Friday came and Saturday noon,
All along, down along, out along lee.
Tom Pearce's old grey mare had not trotted home.

Tom Pearce he went up to the top of the hill,
All along, down along, out along lee.
He found his old grey mare a-making her will.

Tom Pearce's old grey mare she took sick and died,
All along, down along, out along lee.
Tom Pearce he sat down on her tombstone and he cried.

But this isn't the end o' this shocking affair,
All along, down along, out along lee.
Nor, though they be dead, of the horrid career.

When the wind whistles shrill in the dead of the night,
All along, down along, out along lee.
Tom Pearce's old mare do appear ghastly white.

And all the night long you'll rattlings and groans,
All along, down along, out along lee.
It's Tom Pearce's old grey mare, she's rattling her bones.