Now the Winter Is Over (The Ploughboy)

DESCRIPTION: "Now the winter is over and the summer is come, Our fields look pleasant and gay." "Here is the little ploughboy so fresh as a rose... And the fairy maid sat milking her cow." She rejects his request to go with him, but they end up at church to marry
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Hammond collection)
KEYWORDS: love courting marriage farming
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Brocklebank/Kindersley-DorsetBookOfFolkSongs, p. 2, "The Ploughboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1353
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Well Met, Pretty Maid (The Sweet Nightingale)" (form, theme)
NOTES [94 words]: This is so similar to "Well Met, Pretty Maid (The Sweet Nightingale)" in both form (four independent lines, last two syllables of the fourth line repeated, then the whole line repeated; they can be sung to the same tune) and theme that, if it had just been me, I would most likely have lumped them. But they do have distinct first verses -- or, rather, this has a first verse not found in "Well Met, Pretty Maid." Roud splits them, probably on that basis, and I have done the same, but I would not be even slightly surprised in they sprang from the same roots. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: Dors002

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography