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On Saturday evening at the concerting hall,
I met lovely Jimmie both handsome and tall;
He said, "Come along with me a piece down the road,
For to view my father's dwelling and the state of his home."
"There's a tree in my father's garden, lovely Jimmy," says she,
"Where the young men and maidens they are waiting on me;
While my parents are a-sleeping, laying there silently,
Meet me there, my lovely Jimmy, you're the lad I love thee."
Her old father, being in ambush as they started,
Sayin', "l'll go along with you wherever you'll go."
Her father went along, sir, and his father, too,
It is with a short weapon he pierced her love through.
"Father, dear father, if this be your will,
And the innocent blood of my love you spill,
I will sit down beside him on the grating where he lies,
May the heavens shine around him, he's my own darling b'y.
"Come dig my love a grave, dig it long, wide and deep,
And now throw it over with the lillies so sweet;
Then l'll lie a-weeping by a strange counteree,
Where I will know no one, nor no one know me."
Green grow the rushes and the tops of them small,
Sure love is a thing that goes over us all;
I allow she lies a-weeping with a stone on her breast,
And the grave is the next place her hope she finds.
Collected in 1951 from George Carew of Trepassey, NL, and published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA).
MacEdward Leach also collected a variant published as #19, Lovely Jimmie, on p.172 of Folk Ballads And Songs Of The Lower Labrador Coast by the National Museum of Canada (Ottawa, 1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved
A variant was also collected by Helen Creighton [1899-1989] and published as Lovely Jimmie in Maritime Folk Songs, pp.86-87 (Ryerson, Toronto, 1962/1972).
A variant was collected in 1959 from Mrs. Clara Stevens of Bellbuns, NL, by Ken Peacock and published as Green Grow the Laurels in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 2, pp.456-457, by The National Museum Of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved.
And a variant was collected by Maud Karpeles [1885-1976] and published as #66, The Father In Ambush, in Folk Songs From Newfoundland (Faber & Faber, London, 1971; also Oxford, 1934).
