Ed de Moel

Child Ballads - Lyrics

Child 286
The Sweet Trinity (The Golden Vanity)
Version C

  1. Stall-copy, Pitts, Seven Dials, Logan's Pedlar's Pack, p. 45.
  2. Long's Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect, p. 145.
  3. Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 238, compounded from the recitation of an old woman of Buckie, Banffshire, and a chap-book copy.
  4. Baring-Gould and Sheppard, Songs of the West, No 64, Part III, p. 24, Part IV, p. xxxi, taken down from James Olver, Launceston (an improved copy),
  5. Buchan's Manuscripts, II, 390, 414.
  6. Motherwell's Manuscript, p. 392, and Note-Book, p. 50, from the recitation of Agnes Lyle, 24th August, 1825.
  7. Macmath Manuscript, p. 80, from the recitation of Miss Agnes Macmath, 1893; learned at Airds of Kells, Kirkcudbrightshire.

Narrative

1   'I have a ship in the North Countrie,
And she goes by the name of the The Golden Vanity;
I'm afraid she will be taken by some Turkish gallee,
As she sails on the Low Lands Low.'
2   Then up starts our little cabin-boy,
Saying, Master, what will you give me if I do them destroy?
'I will give you gold, I will give you store,
You shall have my daughter when I return on shore,
If ye sink them in the Low Lands Low.'
3   The boy bent his breast and away he jumpt in;
He swam till he came to this Turkish galleon,
As she laid on the Low Lands Low.
4   The boy he had an auger to bore holes two at twice;
While some were playing cards, and some were playing dice,
He let the water in, and it dazzled in their eyes,
And he sunk them in the Low Lands Low.
5   The boy he bent his breast and away he swam back again,
Saying, Master take me up, or I shall be slain,
For I have sunk them in the Low Lands Low.
6   'I'll not take you up,' the master he cried;
'I'll not take you up,' the master replied;
'I will kill you, I will shoot you, I will send you with the tide,
I will sink you in the Low Lands Low.'
7   The boy he swam round all by the starboardside;
They laid him on the deck, and it's there he soon died;
Then they sewed him up in an old cow's-hide,
And they threw him overboard, to go down with the tide,
And they sunk him in the Low Lands Low.

This page most recently updated on 19-May-2011, 16:35:20.
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