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Brown Robin

[ Roud 62 / Song Subject MAS1065 ; Child 97 ; G/D 8:1932 ; Ballad Index C097 ; DT BRNROBIN ; trad.]

James Kinsley: The Oxford Book of Ballad

Sharron Kraus and electronic musician David Muddyman recorded Brown Robin in 2002-3. This recording was finally released in 2023, after Muddyman’s death, on their download album, Birdloom.

Lyrics

Sharron Kraus sings Brown Robin

The king and his noble lords
Sat drinking of the wine;
And he’d have none but his own daughter
To wait on them at dine.

She’s served them and she’s served them well,
All in a gown of green,
But her eye was on Brown Robin,
Stood low under the rain.

She’s gone up to her bed chamber,
As fast as she could run,
And there she’s opened her shot-window,
And she’s harped and she sang.

“There sits a bird in in the apple tree,
And o but she sings sweet!
I hope to live and see the day
When with my love I’ll meet.”

“If this be true, my love,” he said,
As your tongue tells to me,
At the hour of twelve this night,
At your bower shall I be.”

For she has plied the gatekeeper
With strong beer and with wine,
And she stole of the keys to her father’s gates
And she’s let her true-love in.

When night was gone, and day was come,
And sun shone on their feet,
Then out and spoke Brown Robin,
“I’ll be discovered yet.”

Then out and spoke that gay lady:
“My love, you need no doubt;
It was by wile I brought you in,
By wile I’ll bring you out.”

She’s taken up a cup of wine,
To her father in went she;
“O drink our wine, my father,
Drink the wine with me.”

And it’s, “Woe be to your wine, father,
That ever came o’er the sea;
It’s put my head in such a stir,
And in my chamer I cannot be.”

“Go out, go out, my daughter dear,
Go out and take the air;
Go out and walk in the good green wood,
With all your maidens fair.”

And she has gone to her chamber,
As fast as she could run,
And she has dressed Brown Robin
Like any fair woman.

The gown she put upon her love
Was of the dainty green,
His hose was of the soft, soft silk,
His shoes the cordwain fine.

The first young maiden she sent out
Was Brown Robin by name;
Then out it spoke the king himself,
“There goes is a sturdy dame.”

And she went out that May morning,
That May morning so gay,
But she came never back again,
Her old father to see.