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As I was a-walkin' and ramblin' one day,
I espied a young couple so fondly display;
And one was a young maid so sweet and so fair,
And the other one was a soldier and a brave grenadier.
And they kissed so in comfortin' as they clung to each other,
They was arm in arm down the road like sister and brother;
They was arm in arm down the road till they came to a stream,
And they both sat down together now to hear the nightingale sing.
Well, out of his knapsack he drew a fine fiddle,
And he played her such merry tunes that you ever did hear;
And he played her such merry tunes that the valley did ring,
Oh, stop, cried the fair maid, hear the nightingale sing.
And now, said the fair maid, will you marry me?
Oh no, said the soldier, how ever can that be?
For I leave a wife at home in the old counterie,
And she is the prettiest thing that you ever did see.
Well, now I'm off to India for seven long years,
Drinking wines and strong whiskies instead of pale beers;
But when I return again it will be in the spring,
And we'll both sit down together, love, to hear the nightingale sing.
And they kissed so in comfortin' as they clung to each other,
They was arm in arm down the road like sister and brother;
They was arm in arm down the road till they came to a stream,
And they both sat down together now to hear the nightingale sing.
And they both sat down together now to hear the nightingale sing.
This variant arranged and recorded by His Nibs, Harry Hibbs.
See more songs by Harry Hibbs.
A variant was collected in 1952 from Mrs. Ambrose Coombs of Biscay Bay, NL, and published as The Nightingales in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA).
A variant was collected by Maud Karpeles [1885-1976] and published as #77, The Nightingale, in Folk Songs From Newfoundland (Faber & Faber, London, 1971; also Oxford, 1934).
MacEdward Leach also collected a variant as One Morning In May (The Nightingale), published on pp.744-745 of The Ballad Book (A.S.Barnes, New York, 1955).
Kenneth Peacock noted that One Morning In May descended from The Nightingale's Song, which appeared in the seventeenth century Roxborough Collection. Sometimes known as The Brave Volunteer, it was collected in the Southern Appalachians by Cecil Sharp as The Nightingale. Double entendre songs of this type have been popular ever since Elizabethan times. In The Banks Of The Roses, (also in this Newfoundland collection) the young man entertains his lady friend with his 'flute'.
