Banks of Sweet Primroses, The

DESCRIPTION: Speaker, while walking by banks of primroses, sees and courts a lovely woman. She spurns him and declares her intention to separate from men. (He tells listeners that even a cloudy, dark morning turns into a sunshiny day.)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1891
KEYWORDS: courting rejection flowers
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond,North,South),Wales,Scotland(Aber)) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (15 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "BANKS OF SWEET PRIMROSES, THE"
Sharp-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 51, "The Sweet Primeroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Reeves/Sharp-TheIdiomOfThePeople 97, "Sweet Primaroses" (1 text)
Karpeles-TheCrystalSpring 41, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
VaughanWilliams/Lloyd-PenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs, p. 17, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Wt 387, "Banks of the Sweet Primroses" (1 text including vocal rendition)
Palmer-EnglishCountrySongbook, #79, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #39, "Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greig/Duncan8 1841, "There's Mony a Dark and a Cloudy Morning" (1 fragment)
MacColl/Seeger-TravellersSongsFromEnglandAndScotland 68, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, pp. 127-128, "As I Rode Out" (1 text, 1 tune)
Butterworth/Dawney-PloughboysGlory, p. 6, "As I Roamed Out" (1 text, 1 tune, listed by Dawney as "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" although the surviving text is quite close to the "As I Roved Out" versions of "Seventeen Come Sunday" [Laws O17]; Butterworth expurgated several verses which might have clarified the origin)
OShaughnessy-YellowbellyBalladsPart1 2, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Purslow-TheConstantLovers, p. 5, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, SWTPRIM*
Roud #586
RECORDINGS:
Bob & Ron Copper, "Sweet Primeroses" (on FSB01, HiddenE)
Louis Killen, "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" (on BirdBush2)
Phil Tanner, "The Sweet Prim-E-Roses" (Columbia FB 1570; on Voice01 as "The Sweet Primrose"; on Lomax41, LomaxCD1741)
BROADSIDES:
NLScotland, L.C.Fol.70(141), "The Banks of sweet Primroses," unknown, c. 1830-1850
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Lovely Nancy (VI)" (floating lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Three Long Steps
NOTES [502 words]: The Greig/Duncan8 fragment is a floating "cloudy morning" verse that might as well be put here.
The floating weather verse can cut both ways. Greig/Duncan8 1841, included here, has both options: "There's mony a dark and a cloudy morning Turns out a bright and sunny day And there's mony a bright and sunny morning Turns out a dark and a rainy day."
The more familiar option, usually in "The Banks of Sweet Primroses," "The Dark-Eyed Sailor" [Laws N35], "The First Time That I Saw My Love," and "Lovely Nancy" (VI) begins with the cloudy morning. "Oh! No, No" begins with "the brightest of mornings." "Nancy" (II) [Laws P12] can go either way as a follow-up to "Never cast your first true love away." - BS
In this connection, the mention of Sweet Primroses just might be significant. Binney, pp. 90-91, points out that "The evening primrose (Oenetherus) became the emblem of silent love because of its habit of opening its delicate pale yellow petals only at night." In general, she declares that the meaning of the primrose is that "I might learn to love you."
Purslow speculated that the final verse, which is absent in some versions, was added by a broadside printer to give the song a conclusion.
On the other hand, the form of the beginning of the song is very old and not really related to a particular flower. Compare this item from Brown, #178, p. 273, which opens
As I wakyd vppone a day
To take þe aere off field and flowre,
In a mery morenynge off may
When fflowrys were ffull of swete flauowre,
i.e.
As I walked upon a day
To take the air of field and flower,
In a merry morning of May,
When flowers were full of sweet flavor.
(This is Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #373; DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #630).
Brown's text comes from San Marino, Henry E. Huntington Library MS. HM 183, folio 5; there are two other manuscript copies (London, British Library Sloane 747, folios 95-96, and Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Library Ff.1.6, -- the famous Findern Manuscript -- folios 56-58 in the newer folio numbering, 46-48 in the old. The colophon has an attribution of sorts: "quod Lewestone"). Brown labels the piece, "Medicines to Cure the Deadly Sins." F. J. Furnivall, who published it in Political, Religious and Love Poems, from Lambeth MS. 306 and other sources, 1903, apparently called it "The Seven Deadly Sins" (Beadle/Owen, p. xxii. It it the eighteenth piece in the Findern Manuscript, according to ibid.). The Findern version consists of eleven twelve-line stanzas rhymed ababababbcbc with refrain "to live in ease."
Wenzel, p. 244, says that the poem "stand[s] at the fork where preachers' verses and non-preaching lyric poetry parted company. [it] deal[s] with topics or themes that were common to both preachers and poets but were treated with linguistic and poetic means that are markedly different. It is about the "deadly wounds" inflicted by "this wicked world," and that it is Jesus who can cure him. The wounds are the seven deadly sins. (Wenzel, p. 245). - RBW
Bibliography

Beadle/Owen: Richard Beadle & A. E. B Owen, The Findern Manuscript: Cambridge University Library MS. Ff.1.6, Scolar Press, 1977
Binney: Ruth Binney, Nature's Way: lore, legend, fact and fiction, David and Charles, 2006
Brown: Carleton Brown, editor, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, Oxford University Press, 1939
Wenzel: Siegfried Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric, Princeton University Press, 1986

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