Connell wrote this arrangement of Cruel Mother for the voice of Sally Taylor, who recorded vocals on Stray Hens album "The Confluence", released December 2016.
The song is very old, recorded by Ewan MacColl (1956), Cecilia Costello (1975), Shirley Collins (1970), June Tabor, and Kerfuffle among others, including Rosie Hood (2017), who says in her liner notes:
"Collected from Mary Bond, Quenington, by Alfred Williams, published in Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923. Williams described this song as a ‘fragment’ and I wrote the first two verses based on other versions of this song. This is a particularly damning version with no hint of empathy towards the mother."
lyrics
The Cruel Mother: Trad Arr Mandy Connell
I went walking in the woods one night
All alone and aloney O
Saw two babes playing at the ball
Down by the Greenwood Sidey O
Oh Babes oh Babes if you were mine,
I'd dress you up in scarlet fine
I wouldn't go walkin by the riverside
Down by the Greenwood Sidey-O
Oh mother mother we were thine
You didnt dress us coarse or fine
You wen't walking by the riverside
Pushed your back against a thorn
pushed and you pushed til we were born
Put the rope around our neck and
You pulled on the rope til we were dead.
Oh Babes oh Babes what am I to do
for the cruel thing that I did to you
Bonnie boys come tell to me what kind of death I'll have to die
Seven years as a fish in the flood
Seven years as a bird in the wood
Seven years a tongue in the warning bell
Seven years in the flames of hell
Oooohhhh
I went walking in the woods one night
All alone and aloney O
Saw two babes playing at the ball
Down by the Greenwood Sidey O
credits
from Wishing Well (Maggie Darlings),
track released August 11, 2017
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