STAINES MORRIS does not come from oral tradition. It was first recorded in Elizabethan times as a lute piece though as sung here the tune derives from the one given in Playford's English Dancing Master of 1650. The present text is the Maypole Song from Actaeon and Diana, a collection of "drolls and farce jigs," musical skits of the Restoration. Tune and text were married by William Chappel, and since the "discovery" of the song in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Times, printed in the 1850s, this setting has come to be one of the "hits" of the British folk music revival.
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Come ye young men, come along
With your music, and your song
Bring your lassies in your hands
For 'tis that which love commands:
Then to the Maypole haste away
For 'tis now our holiday
Then to the Maypole haste away
For 'tis now our holiday.
It is the choice time of the year
For the violets now appear
Now the rose receives its birth
And pretty primrose decks the earth:
Here each bachelor may choose
One that will not faith abuse
Nor repay with coy disdain
Love that should be loved again:
And when you well reckoned have
What kisses you your sweetheart gave
Take them all again, and more
It will never make them poor:
When you thus have spent your time
And the day be past its prime
To your beds repair at night
And dream there of your day's delight:
Repeat First Verse
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