Bonny Sailor Boy, The [Laws M22]

DESCRIPTION: A rich girl and a poor sailor are in love. The girl's father hears them courting in the garden, bursts in, and threatens the boy with transportation. The girl swears to remain faithful
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Greig/Duncan6)
KEYWORDS: poverty sailor love transportation
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar) Britain(Scotland(Aber),England(South)) Ireland
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Laws M22, "The Bonny Sailor Boy"
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland 163, "My Darling Ploughman Boy" (1 text, 1 tune, much worn down)
Greig/Duncan3 413, "My Ploughman Boy" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan6 1117, "My Darling Sailor Boy" (2 fragments plus a single verse on p. 547, 2 tunes)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, p. 328, "My Bonnie Sailor Boy" (1 text)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, p. 179, "Jolly Young Sailor Boy" (1 text, 1 tune)
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 18, "The Newry Prentice Boy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morton/Maguire-ComeDayGoDayGodSendSunday 39, pp. 127-128,171, "The Dandy Apprentice Boy" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 745, BONSAIL*
Roud #843
RECORDINGS:
Jimmy McBeath, "My Darling Ploughman Boy" (on FSB01) (on FSBFTX15)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Servant Man" (plot)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Bonny Lighter Boy
NOTES [97 words]: This seems a group of songs sharing a single verse in which the father overhears the lovers and threatens to transport the man and a verse in which the woman talks of making her bed with leaves. Roud numbers Greig/Duncan3 as #5935.
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 18: the boy is "a weaver lad and him apprentice bound." Roud makes this version #2934.
Morton/Maguire-ComeDayGoDayGodSendSunday is like another Irish version (OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads) in that the apprentice is a weaver; it ends "And so she sang and the valleys rang and she gained her apprentice boy." - BS
Last updated in version 4.3
File: LM22

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