> Lal & Norma Waterson > Songs > The Wealthy Squire

The Girl I Left Behind / The Wealthy Squire

[ Roud 262 ; Master title: The Girl I Left Behind ; Laws P1 ; G/D 5:1059 ; Henry H188 ; Ballad Index LP01 ; Bodleian Roud 262 ; Folkinfo 210 ; DT GIRLLFT6 ; Mudcat 8328 ; trad.]

Gale Huntington, Lani Herrmann, John Moulden: Sam Henry’s Songs of the People Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger: Travellers’ Songs From England and Scotland John Ord: Bothy Songs and Ballads

Uncle Dave Macon and Sid Harkreader recorded two verses of The Girl I Left Behind Me (“If I can make it through this war…”) on 15 April 1925 on New York City for the 78rpm Shellac record Vocalion 15034. This recording was included in 2016 on the Nehi anthology of British Songs in the USA, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. Steve Roud noted:

The Girl I Left Behind Me is one of those titles which does service for a number of distinct songs, which range in tone from sadness and regret to masculine bravado of the ‘girl in every port’ variety. Uncle Dave only sings two verses, but it is this tune which really links his performance with the Old World, and the extremely widespread dance tune, Brighton Camp, or the Girl I Left Behind Me, which probably dates from the late 1750s. Amongst other uses, regimental bands would somewhat pointedly play the tune as the soldiers marched away from a locality in which they had been quartered for a while.

Texas Gladden sang a fragment of Always Been a Rambler to Alan Lomax in August 1951. It was included in 2001 on her Rounder anthology in the Alan Lomax Collection: Portrait series, Ballad Legacy.

Jean Ritchie sang The Girl I Left Behind in 1954 on her Elektra album Kentucky Mountain Songs. She noted:

My mother says this is only a little piece of a great long song, but she can’t remember the rest. It is one that used to fascinate me because it talked so casually about “crossing the main”, and there we were, separated from the ocean by generations and hundreds of miles! “Old George’s Square” probably refers to George Square in Glasgow, Scotland.

Séamus Ennis sang The Wealthy Squire in 1958 on his Tradition album The Bonny Bunch of Roses. He noted:

This ballad may be heard throughout the English-speaking world. Sometimes sadly and sometimes gaily, it tells the tail of a jilted lover.

Caroline Hughes sang The Girl I Left Behind to Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker in 1963 or 1966. This recording was included in 2014 on her Musical Traditions anthology Sheep-Crook and Black Dog. Rod Stradling noted:

The phrase “the girl I left behind” appears in countless other songs, but I’d never realised that the one bearing this title was so popular—241 Roud instances! Mind you, I suspect Mrs Hughes’ example is nothing more than four ‘floaters’, one of which contains that phrase.

Most of Roud’s instances are from the USA, as are most of the 66 sound recordings, few of which ever seem to have been published.

Other versions available on CD: Evelyn Ramsey (MTCD501-2); Hobert Stallard (MTCD505-6); Grayson & Whitter (Old Hat CD 1001); Spencer Moore (Rounder CD 1702); Texas Gladden (Rounder CD 1800).

Isla Cameron sang My Parents Raised Me Tenderly in 1966 on her eponymous Transatlantic album Isla Cameron. She noted:

Learned from Jean Ritchie, who said it was a fragment of a longer Scottish ballad. Old Georges Square could possibly be St Georges Square in Glasgow—but I’ve never heard it sung in Scotland. The theme is a common enough one…

Dave and Toni Arthur sang a close relative to this song, All Frolicking I’ll Give Over, in 1969 on their Topic album The Lark in the Morning. This track was also included in 2001 on the Fellside anthology on harmony singing, Voices in Harmony. They and A.L. Lloyd noted on the original album:

Happy marriages, faithful lovers, and understanding parents, are seldom considered good news value. Our popular press shows it, and it was the same in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the running patterers hawked the latest ballads on cuckoldry, cruel parents, murders, and disappointed suicides. Our song was published as a broadside in Dublin in 1835, and rapidly became a favourite with stall-ballad printers in Britain and America, under the title of The Girl I Left Behind. It seems to have been a great favourite with English and Scottish farm workers, especially itinerant harvesters and threshers. In America it was popular with lumber jacks and cowboys. and even became a commercial hillbilly hit in the late 1920s. Perhaps it struck a chord in the hearts of young men who left their villages, to seek fortune in the towns, the services, or the colonies, hoping to return to a faithful girl.

Hobert Stallard sang Little Sweetheart, We’ve Done Parted to Mark Wilson and Annadeene Fraley at Waterloo, Ohio on 29 August 1973. This recording was included in 2002 on the Musical Traditions anthology of folk songs of the Upper South, Meeting’s a Pleasure Volume 1. Mark Wilson noted:

This well travelled song is often dubbed The Girl I Left Behind Me, although that nomenclature only invites confusion with the familiar Samuel Lover / Brighton Camp composite. Versions of the song often initiate in a wide variety of ways but then settle onto a relatively stable lyrical core, although some texts then continue onto an account of a second romance with one Maggie Walker or some such personage (the lengthy Angelo Dorian text found in Creighton’s New Brunswick collection illustrates this branch of the song family nicely). Buell Kazee recorded a wonderful rendition for both Brunswick and June Appal (as The Roving Cowboy) and other well known versions include those of Tom Ashley and Grayson and Whitter. The Dixon Sisters knew a few verses of this as well.

Lal and Norma Waterson sang The Wealthy Squire in 1977 on their album A True Hearted Girl. Rachel Straw, Eliza Carthy and Marry and Eleanor Waterson sang it at the Waterson Family’s concert at Hull Truck Theatre on 15 August 2010 which pas published a year later on their DVD Live at Hull Truck. Bob Hudson notes:

In the Watersons’ version, the tune of this song is close to that of We Poor Labouring Men. Often referred to as The Girl I Left Behind, this song is found on both sides of the Atlantic, although in the United States the “wealthy squire” becomes a “wealthy farmer”. Bob Dylan, who took his version from Woody Guthrie (who else?), recorded it for Oscar Brand’s radio show in 1961 and later adapted the tune to his own unreleased song Long Time Gone.

Eddie Butcher sang Girl I Left Behind in 1978 on his Outlet album The Titanic and Other Traditional Folk Songs.

Evelyn Ramsey sang The Girl I Left Behind Me to Mike Yates at her home in Sodom Laurel, Madison County, North Carolina on 29 August 1980. This recording was included in 2002 on the Musical Traditions anthology of songs, tunes and stories from Mike Yates’ Appalachian collections, 1979-1983, Far in the Mountains Volume 2. Mike Yates noted:

Evelyn’s version of this well-known British broadside is similar to versions collected previously in North Carolina by Cecil Sharp—from Allenstand, Carmen and Big Laurel (the present day Sodom Laurel), which are all in Madison County.

Clarence Ashley, from nearby Tennessee, recorded it a Maggie Walker Blues (Folkways LP 2355) and the Forget Me Not Songster called it The Maid I Left Behind. Spencer Moore, from Chilhowie in Virginia, recorded the song for Alan Lomax in 1959 (Rounder CD 1702), while Grayson & Whitter recorded it as far back as 1928 under the title I’ve Always Been a Rambler (reissued on Document DOCD-8055). Seamus Ennis, Bobbie Clancy and Eddie Butcher knew it in Ireland.

Bob Davenport and the Rakes sang The Wealthy Squire in 1997 on their Fellside CD The Red-Haired Lad.

Ken Sweeney sang The Girl I Left Behind in 2001 at the 22^nd Annual Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport.

John Lilly sang I’ve Always Been a Rambler on the 2017 Appalachian ballad tradition anthology Big Bend Killing. Ted Olsen noted:

The traditional story-song I’ve Always Been a Rambler was originally disseminated across the British Isles and in the U.S. by means of broadside publication; it is traceable to another ballad, The Girl I Left Behind, published before 1842. When compared to most Child ballads and some “native American ballads”, which tended to tell complex stories involving believable characters, I’ve Always Been a Rambler is an underdeveloped narrative.

All the ballad reveals about the unnamed rambler’s motivation for journeying across the mountains from West Virginia through Marion, Virginia, and Johnson City, Tennessee, to points beyond—is that he travels out of a compulsion both romanticized and wistful. This performance by the West Virginia-based singer-songwrit-er John Lilly was inspired by Grayson & Whitter’s 1928 recording.

Other songs with the same title

Steve Tilston sang The Girl I Left Behind Me (Brighton Camp) (Roud 23929) in 2005 on his CD Of Many Hands.

Jill Pidd sang a quite different music hall song from the time of the First World War, The Girl I Left Behind Me (Roud 22020), at the Fife Traditional Singing Festival, Collessie, Fife in May 2010. This recording was published a year later on the festival CD Hurrah Boys Hurrah! (Old Songs & Bothy Ballads Volume 7).

Lyrics

Caroline Hughes sings The Girl I Left Behind

I was brought up with some good old parents,
Like any young squire, you know;
But since I’ve took up to rambling,
Oh that’s been the ruins of me.

Well, as I walked over old George’s Square,
The post-boy met me there;
For he handed to me a letter, Love,
For to give me quite understand.

So rambling I will give over,
Good company I will deserve (?)
For the girl that I left in old Dublin Town
She’s got wed to another man.

So rambling I will give over.
Bad company I will deserve (resign?)
No more will I go rambling
For the girl as I left behind.

Hobert Stallard sings Little Sweetheart, We’ve Done Parted

Little sweetheart, we’ve done parted
Many miles of separation from each other we may be.
My parents they treated me kindly, not having no other boy but me
My mind was bent on rambling, but we never could agree.

There lived a rich old farmer who lived a neighbour nigh
Who had the only one daughter on whom I cast my eye.
She was so tall and handsome, so delicate, so fair,
There’s not another girl in old Virginny with her I could compare.

I asked her if she would consent for me to cross the plain
Or if she’d prove true to me ’til I come back again.

I quit my work one evening, started off down the street
The mail coach having arrived and the news boy I did meet.
He handed me a letter which gave me to understand
The girl that I had left in old Virginia had took some sorry, low down man.

I read on a little further, hoping it was not true
My mind being shocked with misery, oh, no, what will I do?
My mind being shocked with misery, this wide world I’ll resign
I’ll spend the rest of my days in rambling for the girl that I left behind.

Lal and Norma Waterson sing The Wealthy Squire

There was a wealthy squire once lived in the town of Rye
He had a lovely daughter and on her I cast me eye
He had a lovely daughter, she was beautiful and fair
And there is no-one in this wide wide world that with her can compare

I asked her if she’d marry me while I sailed o’er the main
And would she does prove faithful until I return again
She said she would prove faithful if I proved true in kind
So we kissed shook hands and parted and I left my love behind

Twas on a summer’s evening as I walked through Georges Square
I overtook the mail cart aye and the postman met me there
He gave to me a letter which made me understand
That the only girl I ever loved had wed another man

In reading the letter over and in finding all was true
I turned around upon my heels not knowing what to do
And maybe I’ll give over and company I’ll resign
And I’ll roam around from town to town for the girl I left behind

Evelyn Ramsey sings The Girl I Left Behind Me

My parents treated me tenderly, they had no child but me.
But my mind was bent on roving, and with them I couldn’t agree.
When I became a rover it grieved my heart most sore,
To leave my aged parents to never see no more.

There was a noble gentleman, in yonders town drew nigh.
He had one only daughter, on her I cast my eye.
She was young, tall and handsome, most beautiful and fair.
There was no other girl, with her I could compare.

I told her my intentions, it was to cross the main.
It’s, “Love will you be faithful? till I return again.”
She said she’d be true to me, till death did prove unkind.
We kissed, shook hands, and parted, and I left my girl behind.

When I left old Ireland, to Scotland I was bound.
Everyone was friendly, they showed me all around.
Where work and money was plentiful and the girls to me proved kind.
But the dearest object of my heart was the girl I left behind.

As I was a-rambling around one day, down in the public square.
The mail-coach had arrived, I met the mailboy there.
He handed me a letter, that gave me to understand,
That the girl I left behind me had wedded another man.

I turned myself all round about, not knowing what to do.
I read a little farther and I found this news proved true.
It’s drinking I’ll throw over, bad company I’ll resign.
I’ll rove around from town to town, for the girl I left behind.

Come all you rambling, gambling boys, and listen while I tell.
It do you no good, kind friends, it will do you no harm.
If you ever court a fair maid, just marry them while you can.
’Cause if you ever cross the main she’ll marry some other man.

John Lilly sings I’ve Always Been a Rambler

I’ve always been a rambler, my trouble’s been quite hard;
Always loved the women, drank whiskey and played cards.
My parents treated me kindly as they had no boy but me;
My mind was bent on rambling, at home I couldn’t agree.

There was a wealthy farmer lived in the country fine,
Had a handsome daughter on who I cast an eye;
She was so tall and handsome, so pretty and so fair,
There’s not one girl in this wide world with her I would compare.

So I asked her if it made any difference if I crossed over the plains;
Said, “It’ll make no difference”, so I returned again;
Said that she’d prove true to me until I proved unkind,
So we shook hands and I parted with the one I left behind.

So I left old West Virginia, to Marion I did go,
On to Johnson City, gonna see the wide world o’er,
Where money and work was plentiful and the girls they treated me kind,
But the only object of my heart was the one I left behind.

I rambled out one evening down by the public square,
Mail had just arriven and the postman met me there,
Handed me a letter which caused me to understand
My girl in West Virginia had married another man.

So I read a few lines further and found that it was true;
My heart filled with trouble, oh what else could I do,
My heart was filled with trouble, with trouble on my mind,
I’m going to drink and gamble for the one I left behind.

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Garry Gillard. Thanks to Bob Hudson for the note.