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Hand and Heart / Come My Love

[ Roud - ; F.C. Ball]

Shirley Collins sang her uncle F.C. Ball’s song Hand and Heart at Sydney Opera House on 17 January 1980. A recording of this wass included with the title Come My Love on her 2002 Fledg’ling anthology Within Sound. It was also included in 2023 on her Domino album Archangel Hill. She noted:

A true story of an ill-fated love affair from the 1920s. My uncle Fred (F.C. Ball, a gas meter reader by day and author of One of the Damned, the biography of Robert Tressell who wrote The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists) was friends with George Collins, who would later become my Dad. George had a younger sister, Ellen Louisa, and Fred fell deeply in love with her. However, he was already engaged to another woman and couldn’t get out of the engagement, as in those days you could be sued for Breach of Promise— and the family couldn’t afford that. What remains is the poem Uncle Fred wrote, which I set to one of the noblest traditional tunes, known in England as Dives and Lazarus, and in Ireland as The Star of the County Down. In 1980 I was invited to do a short tour of Australia, the highlight of which was singing in the Sydney Opera House. Dolly couldn’t travel with me, so I took her arrangements, which were vividly played on the harpsichord by Winsome Evans.

Lyrics

Shirley Collins sings Hand and Heart

Come my love, my only love, and you’re the best of all,
Let’s dance the stars down from the sky and the moon from off the wall.
And if we cannot share a bed because of what they’ll say
Let’s share a bit of field instead until the break of day.

For dreams are things that stay awhile, and we must dream apart
But while our stars are still allied, give me your hand and heart.

For dreams are things that stay awhile, and we must dream apart
But while our stars they’re still allied, give me your hand and heart.