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There's a bouncing girl in Fogo that I am going to see,
No fellow in this regiment knows her but only me;
She cried when I was leaving her, I thought she'd break her heart,
And if I were to find her, no more would we part.
She is the sweetest colour of roses a soldier ever knew,
Her eyes were like the diamonds, they sparkled like the dew;
You may talk about your Scotland girls, from Boston or the Strand,
But you'll get no girl to suit you like the girls from Newfoundland.
Collected in 1959 from Mrs. Wallace Kinslow of Isle aux Morts, NL, by Kenneth Peacock and published in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 2, p.354, by the National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved.
Kenneth Peacock noted that this is the only surviving fragment of a native love eulogy. Fogo is a strongly Irish community off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. The song probably dates from the First World War period.
Although the lyrics appear to be adapted from The Yellow Rose Of Texas, the music is definitely not, so the two songs are considered distinctly different.
A full length variant was collected in 1951 from Leo Halleran of Trepassey, NL, and published as The Girls From Newfoundland in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA).
A variant was recorded as Girls From Newfoundland by Kevin Collins of Placentia, NL (My Old Homestead, 1988, Sawyer Hill Productions) with a musical arrangement of an original Kevin Collins composition.
