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Once I had a true love but now she is gone,
She's gone and she left me, I'm here all alone;
But since she is gone, contented I'll be,
For I know she loves someone far better than me.
Green grow the laurels and soft falls the dew,
Sad was my heart when I parted from you;
But in our next meeting I'll have you to know,
Young girls are deceitful where ever you go.
I pass my love's windows both early and late,
And the looks that she gave me t'would make your heart ache;
The looks that she gave me sixteen thousand would kill,
For I know I'm the only one that she do love still.
I wrote her a love letter with red rosy lines,
She wrote me back another all tangled like twine;
Saying, "You keep your love letters and I will keep mine,
You write to your love and I'll write to mine.
"Once I was as fair as a red flashing rose,
Now I'm as pale as the lily that grows;
Like a flower in the garden all covered with dew,
Don't you see what I've come to for the loving of you?"
Sung by Mike Kent (b.1904) of Cape Broyle, NL, and published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). A variant was also collected by Ken Peacock and published as Green Grows The Laurel in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 2, p.454, by the National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved. A variant in which the singer is a man was also published n 1935 in the novel Little House On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
