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The Old Man Can’t Keep His Wife at Home

[ Roud - ; VWML SBG/1/3/62 ; trad.]

Dave Lowry sang The Old Man Can’t Keep His Wife at Home on his 2024 WildGoose album Songs of a Devon Man. Bill Crawford noted:

Published in Songs of the West. Collected from the old fiddler William Andrews, of Sheepstor, by Baring-Gpuld’s collaborator Mr Bussell [VWML SBG/1/3/62] . Andrews could not remember all the words but recounted the story. Baring-Gould confesses that he “reduced it to three verses and given it, from the man’s point of view, a happier termination”. The story can be traced all over Europe and Baring-Gould traces it as far back as Peter Alphonsus’ Disciplina Clericalis of 1062.

Lyrics

Dave Lowry sings The Old Man Can’t Keep His Wife at Home

Th’ old man can’t keep his wife at home,
She dearly loves abroad to roam,
She will but eat the choicest meat,
And leave th’ old man the bone.

Herself must have good cheer,
Herself drink humming beer.
A merry life lives she,
For her heart is full of glee.

Th’ old man can’t keep his wife at home,
She dearly loves abroad to roam,
She will but eat the choicest meat,
And leave th’ old man the bone.

Th’ old man’s wife went out to dine,
And left him tuck’d in bed at home.
She dressed so fine, drank red, red wine,
Her face with pleasure shone.

She capered and she danc’d,
Like an ostrich pranc’d,
And sang, “There’s none so free,
As old men’s wives may be.”

Th’ old man can’t keep his wife at home,
She dearly loves abroad to roam,
She will but eat the choicest meat,
And leave th’ old man the bone.

The old man began to crawl and cough’d;
Above the door he set a stone,
And he sat and quaff’d thin beer and laugh’d,
Till spasms made him groan.

His wife so late came home,
Then clatter’d down the stone,
It fell upon her head,
It knocked her flat and dead.

Now th’ old man don’t keep a wife at home,
Not one who dearly loves to moan.
Odds bobs, of strife, and gadding wife
Th’ old man now has none.
Odds bobs, of strife, and gadding wife
Th’ old man now has none.