Week 89 – The Woodman’s Daughter

Collected by Cecil Sharp at Warehorne in Kent on the 23rd September 1908, from James Beale.

Other versions – George Maynard’s for instance – often have the female protagonist as “The Poor Old Weaver’s Daughter”.

I added the last verse, because otherwise the song ended with the line “May your prospect never be blighted”. That didn’t seem right when almost every other verse had ended with the phrase “poor old woodman’s daughter”. Actually, having seen other versions now, I realise that a simpler approach would have been to just switch Mr Beale’s last two verses around.

I previously recorded this on the Kentish compilation The Keys of Canterbury (Steel Carpet, 1994).

Broadside ballad sheet from the Bodleian collection: The labourer’s welcome home / The weaver’s daughter; printed by J. Catnach between 1813 and 1838.

The Woodman’s Daughter

Tags: Cecil Sharp, James Beale, Kent, Love Sex & Courtship, poor woman courted by rich man, Roud 1277