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Country Life

[Trad. arr. Watersons]

The Watersons sang Country Life on their LP and CD For Pence and Spicy Ale. This track was also included in the World Music Network anthology The Rough Guide to English Roots Music. On the live version recorded in June 1977 at the 6. Folkfestival auf der Lenzburg they swapped the two verses.

A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

Idyllic songs, praising country pleasures, mostly belong to a time before the agricultural revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries turned the smallholders into a rural proletariat with grievances. The Watersons got this one from Mick Taylor, a sheepdog trainer of Hawes in Wensleydale.

There was some discussion in this Mudcat Café thread about the song and whether it should have “Merrily upon the laylum” or “Merrily upon the layland” in the chorus; with layland meaning fallow ground (Webster). Eliza Carthy cleared this up with a short note:

They sing laylum and take it to mean chorus.

Country Life was also recorded in 2004 by Eliza Carthy with the Oysterband at The Big Session Vol. 1. On this CD there is another completely different song with the same title. Steve Knightley sings lead on this track.

Lyrics

Chorus (after each verse):

I like to rise when the sun she rises
Early in the morning
I like to hear them small birds singing
Merrily upon the laylum
And hurrah for the life of a country boy
And to ramble in the new-mown hay

In spring we sow at the harvest mow
And that is how the seasons round they go
But if all the times if choose I may
't would be rambling through the new-mown hay

In winter when the sky is grey
We hedge and ditch our times away
But in the summer when the sun shines gay
We go rambling through the new-mown hay

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Garry Gillard.