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Maids When You're Young

  • (Trad)

       For he's got no fal-loo-rum, fal-liddle fal-loo-rum
       He's got no fal-loo-rum, fal-liddle fal-lay
       He's got no fal-loo-rum, he's lost his ding-doo-rum
       Maids when you're young never wed an old man

    An old man came courting me, hey doo me darrity
    An old man came courting me, me being young
    An old man came courting me, he did propose to me
    Maids when you're young never wed an old man

    When we sat down to tea, hey doo me darrity
    When we sat down to tea, me being young
    When we sat down to tea, he started teasing me
    Maids when you're young never wed an old man

    When we went up to bed, hey doo me darrity
    When we went up to bed, me being young
    When we went up to bed, he lay as if't were dead
    Maids when you're young never wed an old man

    When he was fast asleep, hey doo me darrity
    When he was fast asleep, me being young
    When he was fast asleep, I from his side did creep
    Into the arms of a handsome young man

       (last chorus:)
       Now he's got fal-loo-rum, fal-liddle fal-loo-rum
       He's got fal-loo-rum, fal-liddle fal-lay
       He's got fal-loo-rum, he's got a ding-doo-rum
       Maids when you're young never wed an old man

    (as sung by The Corries)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

  • [1963:] In a dramatic switch on tradition, recent theatrical fare tends to plug for December-May love affairs. The best example, of course, is 'South Pacific' and the touching romance between the elderly French planter and the young American nurse. [...] But the folk take a more conventional view best summed up in the title and refrain of this lusty song. [This version] is from an 83-year-old English fisherman by the name of Sam Larner via Ewan MacColl. MacColl believes that Larner's may be an adaptation of a traditional Scottish song since the English have generally been somewhat less explicit than the Scots in folksongs such as this one. (Reprint Sing Out 5, 286)

  • [1979:] Known in all English-speaking nations. Just like I'm A Rover it is usually sung in a rowdy manner, while it deserves better. (Loesberg II, 66)

  • [1984:] Another song which provides a salutary humorous warning to young lassies threatened with an unwelcome match - Jeannie's version is explicit enough, but there are others in which the bride waits until her groom is fast asleep, and then creeps out of bed "into the airms of a spunky young man". (Hamish Henderson, notes Jeannie Robertson, 'Up the Dee and Doon the Don')

  • [1986:] Herd's collection has a five-stanza song entitled Scant of Love, Want of Love [taking the same direction]. [...] The numerous versions reported during the last fifty years from Scotland, England, Ireland and North America indicate that an evolutionary process has changed and simplified the basic form of the song. It would appear likely that the first major change was the transformation of the last line of the opening stanza into a refrain. At another stage of development one of the stanzas was adopted as a chorus. The ultimate regularisation of the stanzaic pattern [...] with its repetitions and recurrent refrains facilitates improvisation and probably accounts for the fact that many of the later printed versions are substantially longer than Herd's text. (MacColl/Seeger, Doomsday 256f)

  • [1994:] When The Dubliners released [this song] it met the same fate as Seven Drunken Nights, although this time there was no official admission of a ban. Just the same, the song was considered too explicitly sexual even in England for the public service airwaves, and again it was left to the pirate radio stations to put The Dubliners before their audience. (Geraghty, Luke Kelly 114)

Quelle: Scotland

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