Henry's Songbook

Love Is Teasing (Love Is Pleasing)

• (Trad)

              For love is teasing and love is pleasing
              And love is a pleasure when first it's new
              But as it grows older ach love grows colder
              And fades away like the morning dew

  I wished, I wished, oh I wished in vain
  I wished I was a lad again
  But lad again I can no more be
  Than apples grow on an orange tree

  When I was a young man I did not care
  I drank the whisky night and morn
  But since I've married that girl so fair
  I rue the day that I was born

  I wished, I wished that my bairn was born
  And sitting on his mother's knee
  And me poor boy I was dead and gone
  The long green grass growing over me

  (as sung by Alex Campbell)

• I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
  I wish I were a maid again
  But a maid again I can never be
  Until apples grow on an ivy tree

  For love is pleasing and love is teasing
  And love is a treasure when first it's new
  But as love grows older then love grows colder
  And it fades away like the morning dew

  There is an alehouse in the town
  And there my love he sits him down
  He takes a strange girl on his knee
  And he tells her things that he once told me

  For love and porter make a young girl older
  And love and whiskey make her old and grey
  And what cannot be cured, love, must be endured, love
  And now I am bound for Amerikay

  (instr.)
  (instr.)
  But as love grows older then love grows colder
  And it fades away like the morning dew

  (as sung by Marianne Faithfull on a Chieftains recording)

•     Love is teasing, love is pleasing
      And love is a pleasure when first it's new
      But as love grows old, love grows cold
      And fades away like morning dew

  I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
  I wish I were a maid again
  But a maid again I ne'er can be
  Till apples grow on an ivy tree

  I leaned my back against some young oak
  Thinking it was a trusty tree
  First it bent and then it broke
  So did my true love and me

  I wish, I wish my babe was born
  Sitting on its nurse's knee
  And I poor girl was dead and gone
  The long green grass growing over me

  (as sung by Iain MacKintosh & Hamish Imlach)

•     Oh love is teasing and love is pleasing
      And love is a treasure when first it's new
      But as it grows older then love grows colder
      And fades away like the morning dew

  I left my father, I left my mother
  I left my sisters and brothers too
  I left my friends and my kind relations
  I left them all for the love of you

  Oh turn around love, you yield a fortune
  Oh turn around love, and smile at me
  Oh surely there must be a place of torment
  For this young girl who deceived me

  So lads beware of your false true lover
  And never mind what the young girls say
  They're like the stars on a foggy morning
  You think they're near but they're far away

  (as sung by The Spinners)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

• [1967:] We have suggested the majority of English songs tell a story or at least purport to. But there are also songs that are simply expressions of mood and nothing more. They are not numerous but they are confusing in their variety because they make use of a stock of symbolic or epigrammatic verses that are combined and re-combined in song after song, so that often it is hard to tell one piece from another. This stock of common-place lyrical 'floaters' [...] is relatively restricted, comprising perhaps not many more than fifty tropes in all [...]. The verses are usually concerned with love, especially love betrayed or denied, and a repertory of such verses provides a handy kit for making countless songs almost at will. [...] Fluid as the use of these floating stanzas may be, sets of them sometimes show signs of crystallizing into specific songs [e.g. Love Is Teasing]. [...] Few of these floationg lyrics are datable. They are the product of some sentimental flowering of the spirit, but whether they were all produced at the same period or represent the accretion of centuries would be hard to say. (Lloyd, England 178ff)

• [1972:] [This] has long been a standard in the folk clubs of Britain. The tune is almost certainly of Irish origin, varied over the years, but the words tend to be 'zippers and floaters', found in a multitude of other settings. (Notes Spinners, 'Love Is Teasing')

• [1974:] This was the first song I ever heard the Dubliners sing back in 1959. (Notes Noel Murphy, 'Murf')

• [1977:] Probably started out in the south of England but by now is a hybrid. (Notes Jean Redpath, 'Ballad Folk')

• [1982:] [For instance, refrain and verse 1 of the Alex Campbell version are] typical floating verses. These are verses that occur in a number of songs without any apparent connection with the story. Old-time audiences tended to like a song with plenty of verses, partly because it gave them a better opportunity to learn the tune, and floating verses were a useful way of 'padding'. (Pollard, Folksong 31f)
  Love is pleasing, collected in the West Country and well known in Scotland, has some verses in common with Waly waly, of which two versions exist. It is possible that all these variants spring from one original ballad which has not been identified. (Pollard, Folksong 37)