Digital Tradition Mirror

Grey Cock (2)

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

(alternate:)

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Grey Cock (2)

Saw you my father, saw you my mother
Saw you my true love John?
He told his only dear that he would soon be here
But he to another is gone.

I saw not your father,  I saw not your mother
But I saw your true love John
He's met with some delay that causeth him to stay
But he will be here ere long

When I came to my true love's door
I gently tirled the pin
My true love she arose and she slipped on her clothes
And so softly she let me in

All the forepart of the night
We did both sport and play
And all the last part of the night
She slept in my arms till day

Fly up fly up my bonny grey cock
And crow when it is day
Your breast shall be like the bonny beaten gold
And your wings of the silver grey

The cock he proved false and untrue he was
For he crew an hour too soon
My love she thought it day and she hastened me away
And it proved but the blink of the moon

The wind it did blow and the cocks they did crow
As I tripped over the plain
I wished myself back in my truelove's arms
And she in her bed again

from Sedley, Seeds of Love.  His note below:
This is a fairly drastic collation of four texts; Herd's (1769),
Chappell's and two sets collected by Hammond in Dorset.
This was originally a revenant ghost song (cf. The Demon Lover
and not the ballad that  Child took it to be (no. 248).  The final
stanza which appears in one of the Dorset versions, is clearly a
descendent of the famous Western Wind fragment.
The tune is the one usually associated with the Scottish versions,
with the variant published by Chappell (who thought it might have
been composed by James Hook, composer of The Lass of Richmond
Hill
play.exe GREYCOC2.2
SOF

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