The Tailor and the Crow

Now one midsummer's morning as I was a-walking,
Fol-de-lol-the-did-dle-lol-the-li-do,
One midsummer's morning as I was a- walking,
Fol-de-lol-the-did-dle-lol-the-li-do,
One midsummer's morning as I was a-walking,
The birds began to whistle O! And I began to sing,
To my Heigh! ho! the carrion crow,
Cries Pork! Beacon! Pork! Beacon!
Oh Fol-de-lol-the-did-dle-lo-the-li-do!

Now that false carrion crow he stands upon an oak
And he swears he sees a tailor a-cutting out a cloak.

O! Wife, go and fetch me my arrow and my bow
That I may go and shoot at that false carrion crow.

The tailor he shot and he just missed the mark
And he shot the old dairyman's sow right through the heart.

"Oh wife! Go and fetch me some treacle in a spoon
For the dairyman's old sow's in a damn poor tune."

Now the old sow she died and the bell begins to toll,
And the little pigs are screeching for the old sow's soul.

But the tailor now says that he don't care a louse,
For now he's got black-puddings and chitterlings in the house.

From Marrowbones, Purslow
Collected from William Bartlett, Dorset, 1905
RG
oct96