When My Apron Hung Low

When My Apron Hung Low
Previously unreleased.

What a voice, what a voice, what a voice I hear,
For it's like the voice of my Willie dear.
For if I had wings like that swallow fly,
For I would clasp in the arms of my Billy boy.

When my apron it hung low,
My true love followed me through frost and snow.
But now my apron it is tae my shin,
And he passes me by and he'll ne'er peer in.

It was up onto the white house brae,
That he called a strange girl to his knee.
And he tellt her a tale which he once told me.

O I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
O I wish I was a maid again.
But a maid again I will never be,
Till a apple grows on an orange tree.

O I wish, I wish that my babe was born,
And smiling on some nurses knee,
And for myself to be dead and gone,
And the long green grass growing over me.

But there's a blackbird sits on yon tree,
Some say it is blind and it canna see,
Some say it is blind and canna see,
And so is my true love to me.

This song is known variously as "I Wish, I Wish" and "What a Voice," by which name it appeared on Jeannie's album for England's Topic label Jeannie Robertson: The Great Scots Traditional Ballad Singer, (now reissued as Ossian OSS CD92). The second verse may seem today a rather euphemistic reference to the girl's pregnancy, but it was plain enough to the ballad audience.

Many Anglo-American songs express similar sentiments. The last line of the third verse, "And he tellt her a tale which he once told me" is similar to "They 11 tell to you some loving story, / They'll tell to you some far-flung lie" in the American "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies"; while the overall tone recalls the bitterness of "Careless Love."

Jeannie knew and sang many such lover's laments, but she had just as many humorous and ribald love songs. Lomax reflected in Folksongs of North America (New York: Doubleday, 1960) that, "although one can find songs of despairing lovers in the British Isles, they occur alongside of ditties which speak of the pleasures of courtship and the fleshly delights of love."