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Country Life

[ Roud 6297 ; Ballad Index DTcountr ; DT COUNTRYL ; Mudcat 47543 ; trad.]

This version of Country Life is related to The Country Life / The Old Cock Crows, but this one has a progression through the seasons in four verses, and the phrase “rambling in/through the new-mown hay” isn’t in the chorus only but at the end of each verse too.

The Watersons sang Country Life on their 1975 Topic record For Pence and Spicy Ale, their first album with Martin Carthy in the group. This track was also included in 1998 on the World Music Network anthology The Rough Guide to English Roots Music. They also sang Country Life live in June 1977 at the 6. Folkfestival auf der Lenzburg but in this version they swapped their two verses. A bunch of musicians sang it at The Sage Gateshead on 1 June 2011 in a fundraiser and tribute to Norma Waterson, One Night for Norma. A.L. Lloyd noted on the original album:

Idyllic songs, praising country pleasures, mostly belong to a time before the agricultural revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries turned the smallholders into a rural proletariat with grievances. The Watersons got this one from Mick Taylor, a sheepdog trainer of Hawes in Wensleydale.

There was some discussion in the Mudcat Café thread Lyr Req: Country Life / Hurrah for the Country Life whether the chorus should have the line “Merrily upon the laylum” or “Merrily upon the layland” with layland meaning fallow ground according to the Webster dictionary. Eliza Carthy cleared this up with a short but resolute: “They sing laylum and take it to mean chorus.”

Folly Bridge learned I Like to Rise from the singing of the Watersons and recorded it in 1991 for their WildGoose cassette All in the Same Tune. This video shows them at a one-off reunion, on the occasion of Graham Metcalfe’s 70th birthday, in November 2015 at Eynsham, Oxfordshire:

Eliza Carthy sang Country Life with the Oysterband in 2004 on The Big Session Vol. 1. (On this CD there is another completely different song with the same title; Steve Knightley sings lead on this track. This song seems to be the title track of Show of Hands’s album Country Life.) This video shows Jon Boden, John Spiers, Eliza Carthy, Steve Knightley, Maclaine Colston, Saul Rose, Jim Moray, and Paul Sartin singing Country Life at the Folk Against Fascism launch in Sidmouth on 7 August 2009:

Jon Boden sang Country Life as the 22 August 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. He noted in the project’s blog:

Mike Waterson’s greatest hit? Probably as far as social singing goes it is. You can’t beat the Watersons’ harmonies either—many have tried and all have failed.

Ian Bruce and Victor Besch sang Country Life on their 2012 CD Above Wild Water.

The Teacups sang A Country Life in 2013 on their Haystack album One for the Pot. They noted:

This has to be the happiest folk song ever, and it’s another one where we’ve cobbled together (or left out) bits and pieces we knew individually. For optimum results, turn up loud and sing your head off.

Andy Turner sang Country Life as the 8 February 2020 entry of his blog A Folk Song a Week.

Whapweasel sang Country Life on their 2012 album Festivalis. They noted:

A song from the late Mike Waterson. A prolific and exceptional songwriter and performer.

Dave Burland and the Awkward Squad sang Country Life in 2017 on their Fat Cat album Okkard.

Banter sang Country Life in 2021 on their Mrs Casey album Three. They noted:

This is our anthemic take on the ever popular singaround song. It’s a celebration of the joys and simplicity of rural life and the delights to be found in the rolling of the seasons. This past year we’ve all yearned to get out of the house and step away from the rat race to a simpler, more mindful existence. Also known as Eggs for Your Breakfast in the Morning (Roud 1752), it’s a well loved and many-time recorded song including The Watersons (1975) who got it from Mick Taylor, a Wensleydale sheepdog trainer.

Lyrics

The Watersons sing Country Life

Chorus (repeated after each verse):
I like to rise when the sun she rises
Early in the morning,
I like to hear them small birds singing
Merrily upon the laylum.
And hurrah for the life of a country boy
And to ramble in the new-mown hay.

In spring we sow, at the harvest mow,
And that is how the seasons round they go.
But if all the times if choose I may
’t would be rambling through the new-mown hay.

[ In summer when the summer is hot
We sing, and we dance, and we drink a lot.
We spend all night in sport and play
And go rambling in the new-mown hay. ]

[ In autumn when the oak trees turn
We gather all the wood that’s fit to burn.
We cut and stash and stow away
And go rambling in the new-mown hay. ]

In winter when the sky is grey
We hedge and ditch our times away;
But in the summer when the sun shines gay
We go rambling through the new-mown hay.

[ O Nancy is my darling gay
And she blooms like the flowers every day.
But I love her best in the month of May
When we’re rambling through the new-mown hay. ]

[ I like to hear the Morris dancers
Clash their sticks and drink our ale
I like to hear those bells a-ringing
As we ramble in the new-mown hay. ]

Notes

The Digital Tradition lists the shown six verses and attributes them to the Watersons. But Mike Waterson only sings the spring and the winter verse on their album, and the winter and the spring verses at the Lenzburg Festival.

I do not know the origin of the verses in brackets, only that Doug Olsen (of the 1973-2013 San Francisco Bay Area trio Oak Ash & Thorn) told me in a private email that he wrote the Nancy verse, although he rewrote it by now as there isn’t new-mown hay in May even if it rhymes:

October ale’s my constant friend
From harvest time til winter’s end.
But Nancy is me darlin’ gay
When we’re ramblin’ thru the new-mown hay.

Acknowledgements

Garry Gillard transcribed the Watersons’ Country Life.