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The Broom of Cowdenknowes

[ Roud 92 ; Child 217 ; Ballad Index C217 ; trad.]

This was sung by the Watersons on New Voices, and on Folk Songs: An Anthology (Topic Sampler 2). Like all Watersons tracks from New Voices, it was reissued on the CD Early Days. A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

In the “Symptoms of Love” section of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1652) we read: 'The very rusticks and hog-rubbers have their wakes, Whitsun ales, shepherds' feasts, country dances, roundelays. They have their ballads, country tunes, O the broom, the bonny, bonny broom.' This is the song that the gipsy Alice Boyce is said to have sung before Queen Elizabeth, and it has remained a favourite ever since. It was originally a Scots song though we can't be sure if the old tune to it (the one the Watersons use here) isn't in fact English. It was published in London, in Playford's Dancing Master in 1650, whereas the first Scottish publication of Cowdenknowes (to another, more modern tune) wasn't till 75 years later, in the Tea Table Miscellany. Anyway, English or Scots, it's a good old tune.

According to the liner note of Cherish the Ladies' album The Girls Won't Leave the Boys Alone, “Cowdenknowes was a mansion and estate near Earlston, a small market and woollen mill town halfway between Edinburgh and the English border.”

Lyrics

Oh the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom
The broom of Cowdenknowes
Fain would I be in the north country
To milk my daddy's ewes

O the maids that ever were deceived
Bear part of these my woes
For once I was a bonny lass
When I milked my daddy's ewes

Oh the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom
The broom of Cowdenknowes
Fain would I be in the north country
To milk my daddy's ewes

Acknowledgements

Lyrics transcribed from the singing of the Watersons by Garry Gillard.

Digital Tradition database.