>
Martin Carthy >
Songs >
I Was a Young Man
>
Tony Rose >
Songs >
Poor Man's Sorrows
The Brisk Young Bachelor / I Was a Young Man / Poor Man's Labours / Poor Man's Sorrows
[
Roud 1572
; Master title: The Brisk Young Bachelor
; G/D 7:1291
; Ballad Index ShH69
; Bodleian
Roud 1572
; Mudcat 18142
; trad.]
I Was a Young Man (also called The Poor Man's Labours and The Poor Man's Sorrow) is a bitter complaint about a lazy wife. It was printed in Folk Music Journal 1966, pp. 80-81, in a version noted by Mrs Harper from her mother in August 1907. This seems to be an Anglicised version of a song from the Greig-Duncan collection of Songs from North-East Scotland.
Martin Carthy sang I Was a Young Man with Steeleye Span live in a “Top Gear” BBC radio session recorded 23 June 1970 in the studio Maida Vale 4 and broadcast 27 June 1970. This session was included as bonus tracks of the 2006 CD reissue of Steeleye Span's Please to See the King; but beware that it was transferred from a quite poor tape. Two years later, he recorded the song properly for his 1972 album Shearwater with double-tracked singing and a quite aggressive dulcimer; this was reissued on his 4 CD anthology The Carthy Chronicles. Another year later, he and John Kirkpatrick sang I Was a Young Man with the Albion Country Band on 1 March 1973 on “Top Gear” and they recorded it for their album Battle of the Field. However, this album was shelved due to the break-up of the band and had to wait until 1976 to be released on Island's budget label HELP in 1976. Martin Carthy commented in his own album's sleeve notes:
The capacity to work things out to everybody's satisfaction is sadly lacking in I Was a Young Man where the unfortunate husband, dominated from the start, begs Death to come in as a release. Her Death. (Duncan collection of songs from NE Scotland).
Tony Rose sang this song with double tracked vocals and a few more verses as Poor Man's Sorrows on his 1976 LP On Banks of Green Willow. He commented in his sleeve notes:
Poor Man's Sorrows is a somewhat bitter plea for men's (a man's) liberation, which is all the more surprising as it comes from Scotland (the Duncan collection), where I had always thought men were hirsutedly men. This one's nothing but a “wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie”.
Len Graham sang When I Was a Bachelor in 1976 on Joe Holmes' and his Free Reed album of traditional songs, ballads, lilts and fiddle tunes from the North of Ireland, Chaste Muses, Bards and Sages.
The Battlefield Band sang The Bachelor in 1978 on their Topic album At the Front. They commented in their sleeve notes:
We learned this song from Jimmy Crowley of Cork. He sang it for Pat [Kilbride] the first time we met him, in the folk club at Bolger's Hotel, Tullamore, where he was playing. We believe he learned it from Len Graham, who has also recorded it.
Little Johnny England sang I Was a Young Man in 2000 on their eponymous CD Little Johnny England.
Crucible sang Poor Man's Labours in 2003 on their WildGoose album Changeling.
Jon Boden sang this song as The Poor Man's Labours as the 6 October 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day, referring to Martin Carthy's version:
Hell of a Carthy track this. I don’t normally like double tracked voices in harmony but there’s something punky and at the same time vaguely prog about the way he pulls it off over a fairly brutal dulcimer drone. What a genius. It’s a good song too.
Compare to this The Young Tradition's The Single Man's Warning (Roud 4744).
Lyrics
Martin Carthy sings I Was a Young Man | Tony Rose sings Poor Man's Sorrow |
---|---|
I was a young man, I was a rover, |
Now when I was a young man, I was a rover, Kissing and clapping was my occupation, |
The very first year my wife I married, |
When the first time I married my wife Janet, |
Now she's fairly altered her meaning, |
But now she's fairly altered her meaning, |
The very first year that we were married |
In the first half year that we was married And when I asked her what was the meaning In the next half year that we was married |
The baby cried, she bitterly scolded, |
When it cried, she bitterly scolded, |
I went up to the top of the hill |
So it's I went up to the top of the hill |
When I came back both wet and weary, |
When I came back both wet and weary, And as I was a-sitting by the side of the fire, |
I'll go home to my aged mother, |
So it's I'll go to my aged mother Take the second one and do try her, |
All young men that is to marry |
So it's all young men that means for to marry Never marry a mother's daughter, |
Acknowledgements
Transcribed from Martin Carthy's singing by Garry Gillard.