Rosemary Lane (song)
Encyclopedia
Rosemary Lane is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 folksong: a ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

 that tells a story
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.Some narrative...

 about the seduction
Seduction
In social science, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person to engage. The word seduction stems from Latin and means literally "to lead astray". As a result, the term may have a positive or negative connotation...

 of a domestic servant by a sailor
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...

. This song, and the related sea shanty
Sea shanty
A shanty is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labor on board large merchant sailing vessels. Shanties became ubiquitous in the 19th century era of the wind-driven packet and clipper ships...

 Bell Bottom Trousers
Bell Bottom Trousers
"Bell Bottom Trousers" is an old sea shanty about a simple English girl and a sailor, and possibly originated in the British Royal Navy. It is a "bawdy" shanty and is typical of the vulgarity of many sea shantys...

, are Roud
Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 #269.

Synopsis

One variant of the song begins with the words:

When I was in service in Rosemary Lane
I won the good will of my master and dame
Until a young sailor came there to stay
And that was the beginning of my misery.


The sailor seduces the servant and makes grand promises of money as he departs, but in fact he leaves her pregnant and alone to ponder her child's future:

Now if it’s a boy, he’ll fight for the King,
And if it’s a girl she’ll wear a gold ring;
She’ll wear a gold ring and a dress all aflame
And remember my service in Rosemary Lane.

Variants

Variants of the song exist under titles including Once When I Was a Servant, Ambletown, The Oak and the Ash, Home, Dearie, Home, The Lass that Loved a Sailor, and When I was Young. The song first was attested in a broadside ballad dating to between 1809 and 1815. The textual history is complex, and verses have been added freely to versions of this song or borrowed into songs circulated under other titles by oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

.
  • Some variants make the sailor a "bold sea captain".

  • The variants Home, Dear Home (or Home, Dearie, Home) and The Oak and the Ash include an additional refrain
    Refrain
    A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...

    , from which these versions take their name:


Home, dear home, and it's home we must be,
Home, dear home, to my dear country,
Where the oak and the ash, and the bonny birken tree
They are all growing green in my own country.


  • Although the variant Ambletown changes the song's perspective to a narration of a letter informing a sailor that he has fathered a child, many lyrics, including the verse "If he's a boy, he'll fight for the king[ ...]", remain constant.

  • The song's lyrics are occasionally set to the tune of Rock-a-bye Baby
    Rock-a-bye Baby
    Rock-a-bye Baby is a nursery rhyme and lullaby. The melody is a variant of the English satirical ballad Lilliburlero. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 2768.-Lyrics:...

    .


Adaptations

  • William E. Henley used portions of the text of this cluster of folksongs for his poem "O Falmouth Is a Fine Town":


:For it's home, dearie, home — it's home I want to be.
Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
They're all growing green in the old countrie.
[. . .]
O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring;
And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king:
With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue
He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do.


  • Bell Bottom Trousers
    Bell Bottom Trousers
    "Bell Bottom Trousers" is an old sea shanty about a simple English girl and a sailor, and possibly originated in the British Royal Navy. It is a "bawdy" shanty and is typical of the vulgarity of many sea shantys...

    , a sea-shanty
    Sea shanty
    A shanty is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labor on board large merchant sailing vessels. Shanties became ubiquitous in the 19th century era of the wind-driven packet and clipper ships...

     adaptation of the song, shares the basic plot, though the variant in question turns the tone from wistful regret to bawdiness
    Ribaldry
    Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....

    :

:If you have a daughter, bounce her on your knee,
And if you have a son, send the bastard out to sea!

  • The United States Army's 10th Mountain Division
    10th Mountain Division
    The 10th Mountain Division is a light infantry division of the United States Army based at Fort Drum, New York. It is a subordinate unit of the XVIII Airborne Corps and the only division-sized element of the U.S. Army to specialize in fighting under harsh terrain and weather conditions...

     further adapted Bell Bottom Trousers for a mountain-village setting (e.g., "I was a barmaid in a mountain inn..." and "...and if you have a son, send the bastard off to ski"), in the process borrowing Falmouth's "as his daddie used to do" theme. The result, titled Ninety Pounds of Rucksack, became the 10th Mountain's official marching/drinking song.

Performances

Performers who have recorded this song or one of its variants include Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she traveled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in England and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music...

, Liam Clancy
Liam Clancy
William "Liam" Clancy was an Irish folk singer and actor from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He was the youngest and last surviving member of performing group The Clancy Brothers. The group were regarded as Ireland's first pop stars...

, Chris Willett, Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...

, and Espers
Espers (band)
Espers is a psych folk band from Philadelphia that is part of the emerging indie folk scene. They formed in 2002 as a trio of singer-songwriter Greg Weeks, Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons but later expanded to a sextet including Otto Hauser, Helena Espvall and Chris Smith...

.
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