Did Ye not Promise to Marry Me?

DESCRIPTION: The singer complains that her lover, leaving her with her baby, had promised to marry her. Her mother, now dead, had warned her that "young men proved untrue." He takes her to London and they marry.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (Greig/Duncan5)
KEYWORDS: love marriage sex abandonment
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Greig/Duncan5 978, "Did Ye not Promise to Marry Me?" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Roud #6731
NOTES [107 words]: Greig/Duncan5 versions seem incomplete but the very general outline reminds me of "The False Lover Won Back" [Child 218]. It also has floating lines "I will clim as high a tree, Bring doon as rich a nest ...," "pull the red roses fine ..." as an invitation to sex, "rock the cradle and spin," "the trees they're high ... the branches they're but small" and "he has turned his high horse roon' aboot"; in two cases the rhyme is lost.
Greig/Duncan5: "Mrs D. Lyall; from her mother. Noted 4th June, 1907. Mrs Lyall's mother learnt this from her own mother, who in turn learnt it from her mother. That goes back about a hundred and twenty years." - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD5978

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