Scarborough Fair (#2/2)

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.

On the side of a hill in the deep forest green.

Tracing of sparrow on snow-crested brown.

Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain

Sleeps unaware of the clarion call.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt:

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;

Without no seams nor needle work,

Then she'll be a true love of mine.

On the side of a hill in the sprinkling of leaves.

Washes the grave with silvery tears.

A soldier cleans and polishes a gun.

Sleeps unaware of the clarion call.

Tell her to find me an acre of land:

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;

Between the salt water and the sea strands,

Then she'll be a true love of mine.

War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions.

Generals order their soldiers to kill.

And to fight for a cause they have long ago forgotten.

Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather:

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;

And gather it all in a bunch of heather,

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.

"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad (existing in more than one version) that hangs, in some versions at least, upon a possible visit by an unidentified person (the "third party") to the Yorkshire town of Scarborough. The song implies the tale of a man who instructs the third party to tell his former love, who lives in said fair town, to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making for him a shirt without a seam and no needlework and then washing it in a dry empty well, adding that if she were to complete these tasks he would take her back into his affections. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her sometime lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt and her heart once he has finished.

As the versions of the ballad known under the title "Scarborough Fair" are usually limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning the plot have been proposed, including the hypothesis that it is about the Great Plague of the late Middle Ages. The lyrics of "Scarborough Fair" appear to have something in common with an obscure Scottish ballad, "The Elfin Knight" (Child Ballad #2) by Francis James Child,[1] which has been traced as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand").

The melody is in Dorian mode and is very typical of the middle English period.