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The lark in the morning she rises off her nest And goes up in the air with the dew on her breast Like a jolly ploughboy she whistles and she sings And she comes home in the evening with the dew on her wings.1 Roger the ploughboy he is a bonny blade. He goes whistling and singing by yonder lone shade. He met with dark-eyed Susan, she's handsome I declare, And she's far more enticing than the birds on the air. He met with dark-eyed Susan, down by a shady grove2 With no-one to listen but the young turtle dove. He threw his arms around her neck and brought her to the fair And he's bought for her some ribbons to tie back her hair. And as they returned from the fair unto the town The meadows they were mowed and the grass it was cut down The nightingale she whistled upon the hawthorn spray And the moon was a-shining upon the new-mown hay.3 Good luck unto the ploughboys wherever they may be They will take a winsome lass for to sit upon their knee And with a jug of beer, boys, they'll whistle and they'll sing And the ploughboy is as happy as a prince or a king.4

Contributed by Michael Crane (macrane @ prodigy.net) - 15.6.04

Notes:

1. Exactly as sung by Paddy Tunney.
2. In this line I dovetail the Tunney version with the Clarke version in Kidson. Though this first line is a composite, the rest of the verse is exactly as found there.
3. This entire verse is intact from the Clarke version.
4. This final verse is identical in both the Clarke and Copper family versions. Kidson being copyrighted 1891, and the Coppers' version recorded in 1963, I find this remarkable. I take this continuity as proof that this sentiment couldn't possibly be expressed more durably and memorably.

The Lark in the Morning	The Lark in the Morning
Paddy Tunney	Bob & Ron Copper, Sussex
The lark in the morning she rises off her nest And goes up in the air with the dew on her breast Like a jolly ploughboy she whistles and she sings And comes home in the evening with the dew on her wings.      Roger the ploughboy he is a bonny blade. He goes whistling and singing by yonder lone shade. He met with dark-eyed Susan, she's handsome I declare, And she's far more enticing than the birds on the air. He met with dark-eyed Susan, she's handsome I declare And he bought for her some ribbons to roll round her hair.	The lark in the morning she arises from her nest And she ascends all in the air with the dew upon her breast, And with the pretty ploughboy she'll whistle and she'll sing And at night she'll return to her own nest again. When his day's work is over, oh, what then will he do? Perhaps then into some near country wake he'll go, And with his pretty sweetheart he'll dance and he'll sing, At night he'll return with his love back again. And as they return from the wake unto the town, The meadows they are mowed and the grass it is cut down, The nightingale she whistles upon the hawthorn spray, The moon is a-shining upon the new-mown hay. Good luck unto the ploughboys wherever they may be, They will take a winsome lass for to sit upon their knee, And with a jug of beer, boys, they'll whistle and they'll sing, For the ploughboy is as happy as a prince or a king.

Though the narrative, as sung by the Coppers, is more fully fleshed out than in Tunney's version, I find that some of the additional detail doesn't interest me.  I've lived with Paddy's fragment long enough that I have my own sense of the story, which the Copper Family's version tends to limit or contradict.  I find Paddy's version of the first stanza superior to the Copper's, which seems to me clumsy and difficult to sing.  I find their second stanza to be nearly unsingable; I also find it unimaginative, uninspiring.  Stanzas three and four, on the other hand, couldn't be more perfect; 'the nightingale she whistles upon the hawthorn spray' and 'take a winsome lass for to sit upon their knee' are beautifully rendered, and roll easily off the tongue.  I incorporated them into my version of the tune on the spot.

Doing a bit of research online, I encountered a broadside on the Bodleian Library site (printed in Manchester in the early years of the nineteenth century), also entitled The Lark in the Morning.  It's clearly an earlier version of the same song, with the starting verses containing much the same images, but, again, Paddy Tunney's lyric is superior.  In this version of the song, though, there's a 'tumble on the new hay,' and:

When twenty weeks were over and gone,
Her mammy asked the reason why she looked so pale and wan...

Another foray into internet-land, on the Contemplator.com site, yielded The Pretty Ploughboy.  The source is Frank Kidson's Traditional Tunes, 1891, and the singer was a Mr Clarke of Yorkshire.

1 - As I was a-wandering in the month of sweet May I heard a young ploughboy to whistle and to say And aye as he was lamenting, these words he did say There's no life like the ploughboy in the month of sweet May. 2 - The lark is a bonny bird and flies off her nest She mounts in the morn air with the dew on her breast She flies o'er the ploughboy, she whistles and she sings And at eve she returns with the dew on her wing. 3 - Early one morning the ploughboy arose Whistling and singing to his horses as he goes He met a pretty fair maid, he met her in the land One question he asked her and he thought it was no shame. 4 - One question he asked her; he would take her to the fair, To buy her some ribbons for to tie up her hair. Now this fair maid being young and foolish To the fair would not go, saying: I don't want your ribbons; I can buy myself a bow. 5 - Then walking and talking down by yon shady grove With no-one to listen but the young turtle-dove He threw his arms around her neck and brought her to the fair And he bought her the ribbons for to tie back her hair. 6 - And as they returned from the fair unto the town The meadows were mowed and the grass it was cut down The nightingale she whistled upon the hawthorn spray And the moon was a-shining upon the new-mown hay. 7 - Good luck unto the ploughboys wherever they may be They will take a winsome lass for to sit upon their knee And with a jug of beer, boys, they'll whistle and they'll sing And the ploughboy is as happy as a prince or a king.

The fifth stanza of this version, seemed to me ideal as a way to round out the narrative line in my own version of the song.  Basically, the version of Lark that I sing is modelled on Paddy Tunney's version, with extensions to complete the story in a way that I find attractive, and want to sing.  In Paddy's second stanza, the repetition of 'He met with dark-eyed Susan', strongly attracted me the first time I heard this song sung, and, before I sat down to memorize the entire lyric, was happy to sing it to myself again and again.  I didn't want to lose this feature when I expanded the narrative, though I wanted at the same time to regularize the length of each stanza.  Tunney's second verse has six lines; all the rest in my version have four. I lopped off 'she's handsome I declare' from the repeat of the 'dark-eyed Susan' line, cut the first two lines of the fifth stanza of The Ploughboy, and combined them, which seemed to me to work well.

Sources:

Books:
Palmer, Everyman's Book of English Country Songs pp.129-130
Palmer, Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams pp.163-165
Kennedy, Folksongs of Britain & Ireland p.317
Purslow, Marrow Bones p.51
Kidson, Traditional Tunes pp.145-146
Davies, Grainger in Gloucestershire (1994) p.12