If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Text
Blackbirds and Thrushes
English source:
Anon.
As I was awalking for my recreation,
Adown by the gardens I silently stray’d,
I heard a fair maid making great lamentation,
Crying: “Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
The blackbirds and thrushes sang in the green bushes;
The wood-doves and larks seem’d to mourn for this maid;
And the song that she sang was concerning her lover:
“O Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
Her cheeks blushed like roses, her arms full of posies,
She stray’d in the meadows and, weeping, she said:
“My heart it is aching, my poor heart is breaking,
For Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
When Jimmy return’d with his heart full of burning,
He found his dear Nancy all dead in her grave.
He cried: “I’m forsaken, my poor heart is breaking,
O would that I never had left this fair maid!”
Adown by the gardens I silently stray’d,
I heard a fair maid making great lamentation,
Crying: “Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
The blackbirds and thrushes sang in the green bushes;
The wood-doves and larks seem’d to mourn for this maid;
And the song that she sang was concerning her lover:
“O Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
Her cheeks blushed like roses, her arms full of posies,
She stray’d in the meadows and, weeping, she said:
“My heart it is aching, my poor heart is breaking,
For Jimmy will be slain in the wars I’m afraid.”
When Jimmy return’d with his heart full of burning,
He found his dear Nancy all dead in her grave.
He cried: “I’m forsaken, my poor heart is breaking,
O would that I never had left this fair maid!”
