Collection Information: Pretty Ponies was collected on May 21st, 2014
at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. It belongs to the
folkloric genre called lullabies.
Informant Data: The informant is Sarah Young, a 20 year-old student at Dartmouth College. She is from Cleveland, Ohio and her family is Western European, especially English and Irish. She is studying engineering at Dartmouth.
Text:
Are you goin' to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt (On the side of a hill in the deep forest green).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground).
Without no seams nor needlework (Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain).
Then she'll be a true love of mine (Sleeps unaware of the clarion call).
Tell her to find me an acre of land (On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Washes the grave with silvery tears).
Between salt water and the sea strands (A soldier cleans and polishes a gun).
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather (War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Generals order their soldiers to kill).
And gather it all in a bunch of heather (And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten).
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.
For clarification, the words in parentheses are the words of the second verse, because when the song is sung, it is repeated a second time with different lyrics to the same melody.
Context: This lullaby is one version of the classic
lullaby Scarborough Fair, which dates back hundreds of years to England.
It was sung to Sarah by her mother, and it seems like her mother must
have been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel, because this is the version they
used in their iconic rendition of the song. Either that or Sarah cannot
quite remember how it went, because she was unsure at points
understandably, because it was sung to her and her siblings when they
were very young to put them to sleep.
Interpretation and Meaning: This centuries old lullaby centers on the idea of a man seeking permission to marry a woman. To get her hand in marriage he must complete a set of impossible tasks. This idea does not really come across to the child of course because it is both spoken in an older version of English and it is complicated to keep track of. In this way this lullaby is double sided, it is entertaining for the singer and the melodic cadence is soothing.
Collector’s Information: Ben Wood, Dartmouth ’16, Russian 13, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Spring 2014
