| Lyrics: | KATE AND HER HORNS
You that in merriment delight,
Pray listen unto what I
recite
So shall you satisfaction find,
Will cure a melancholy mind.
A damsel
fair lived in Colchester,
At length a clothier courted her
Six months apace, both night
and day
But still this damsel answered: "Nay."
At length this maid gave her
consent
To marry him, and straight they went
Unto her parents then, and who
Gave
their consent and their liking too
But see the cursed fruits of gold,
He left his
loyal love to hold
Her grief and sorrow all compassed mind
While he a greater fortune
found
A lawyer's daughter, fair and bright,
Her parents joy and their hearts
delight
He did resolve to make his spouse,
Denying all his former vows
Kate
knew each and every night
He came to his true love, Nancy by name
Sometimes at ten o'clock
or more
Kate to a tanner, went therefore
She borrowed there an old cowhide
With
crooked horns, both large and wide
With hairy hide horns on her head
That near three feet
asunder spread
Kate to a lonesome path did stray,
And at length, the clothier came
that way
He was so sorely scared of her,
She looked so like old Lucifer
And
when he saw her long black tail
He strove to run, but his feet did fail
Kate quickly
seized him by the throat
And said with grim and doleful note
You leave poor Kate, as
I do hear
To wed the lawyer's daughter dear
You shall whether you will or no,
Into my
gloomy regions go
Oh, Master Devil, spare my life,
And I will make young Kate my
wife
See that you do, the Devil exclaimed
Or else you'll hear from me again.
He
went to Kate and married her,
For fear of doleful Lucifer
Her friends and parents thought
it strange
That there was such a sudden change
She never let her parents
know,
Nor any other person too
Till they a year had married been,
She told it at her
lying-in
It pleased the women to the heart,
They said she fairly played her
part
Her husband laughed as well as they,
It was a merry and a happy
day.
This song is found as a broadside in Britain, although it
appears
not to have been collected from oral tradition there. This
version is based on
the set sung by the late George Edwards of
Roscoe, N.Y., a Catskill singer with a fine
repertoire of
traditional ballads. It is printed in Norman Cazden's "Abelard
Song Book."
A very literary piece, it is interesting to note
that this recent text is almost identical to
the set given by the
unknown soldier of Sandgate, Vermont, a veteran of the
Revolutionary
War, who published his Green Mountain Songster as
long ago as 1823. It is also very close to
another Vermont text,
from Fred Atwood of Dover, collected by Margaret MacArthur
in
1961.
Recorded by John Roberts and Tony Barrand on "Mellow with Ale
from the
Horn", FHR-04
@marriage @devil
filename[ KATEHORN
DC
===DOCUMENT BOUNDARY |
