Rosey Apple Lemon and Pear

DESCRIPTION: Singing came of courting. "(Mary Wilson), fresh and fair, A bunch of roses she shall wear, Gold and silver byher side, I know who is her bride." "Rose, apple, lemon, or pear." "Take her by the lily-white hand."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1877 (Mason, _Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs_, according to Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame)
KEYWORDS: playparty courting
FOUND IN: Britain(England,Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1579, "Orange Blossom" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 33, "Rosy Apple" (2 texts)
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 71, "Singing Game (1 text)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #497, Rosy apples, lemon and a pair" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Edwin Sidney Hartland, editor, County Folk-Lore. Gloucestershire (Gloucester, 1892 ("Digitized by Google")), #6 p. 64, ("Golden apple, lemon and a pear") (1 text)
Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #41, "Rosy Apple, Lemon or Pear" (1 text)
Roy Palmer, _Ripest Apples_, The Big Apple Association, 1996, p. 12, "Rosy Apple" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6492
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Wind Blows High" (tune, per Greig/Duncan8)
NOTES [60 words]: Some of the versions of this, such as the Montgomeries', appear to have mixed with "Weevily Wheat" or one of its relatives. With pieces like this, it's hard to tell.
Palmer links this to the legend of Saint Dorothea, a martyred virgin whose iconography included a basket of apples and flower. I can't see that that has anything to do with the song, though. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: MSNR071

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