Down By The Greenwoodside - The Furrow Collective

 

 

       Down by the Greenwoodside is the Furrow Collective’s version of the ballad more widely known as ‘The Cruel Mother’. The animation is by Maud Hewlings.

 

She was walking her fathers walk

Hi-ho

She was walking her fathers walk

She saw two pretty babes playing the ball

Lay me down me di-dilly dilly downward

Down by the Greenwoodside oh.

 

She said "Pretty babes if you's was mine"

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She said, "Pretty babes if you's was mine"

"I'd dress you in such silk and fine"

Lay me down me di-dilly dilly downward

Down by the Greenwoodside oh.

 

They said, "Dear mother when we was yours"

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You took a pen knife long and sharp

And pierced those pretty babes through the heart

Lay me down me di-dilly dilly downward

Down by the Greenwoodside oh.

 

She washed the pen knife in the stream

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She washed the pen knife in the stream

The more she washed it, the blood stained in

Lay me down me di-dilly dilly downward

Down by the Greenwoodside oh.

 

She leant her back up against a nook

Hi-ho

She leant her back up against a nook

First it bent and then it broke

Lay me down me di-dilly dilly downward

Down by the Greenwoodside oh.

      The Cruel Mother is the Child Ballad #20, where a woman falls in love with one of her father's clerk and become pregnant. She delivers the baby in a greenwood and kills him there. On her way home she passes little children playing and wishes they were her own. She tells the children how she would dress them finely, they respond that when they were hers she did not do so, but instead murdered them. The Shirley Collins’s version describes this narrative.