Now all you young fellows take heed what I tell.
A-down in the wood a Green Lady do dwell.
Her hair it is green and all green is her gown,
And she calleth to all, "Come here! Draw near!"
But she means them no good for she drinks their hearts' blood;
They never do wed, for they takes to their bed,
For 'tis Death, cold Death do draw near
And they dies -they all dies at the end of the year.
All under the tree
There sits a Green Lady.
Now all you young fellows take heed what I tell.
A-down in the wood a Green Lady do dwell.
And a bush lad drew nigh with a roving eye
And she called to him, "Draw near! Come here!"
But his sweetheart she ran and caught hold of her man
And she took him away and to him she did say
For 'tis Death, cold Death do draw near
"You shan't die. You shan't die at the end of the year."
All under the tree
There sits a Green Lady.
Now all you young fellows take heed what I tell.
A-down in the wood a Green Lady do dwell.
To the wood then she goes in his breeches and hose
And the Green Lady called, ""Draw near! Come here!"
But a little axe had she, hid down by her knee,
And she chopped down the tree and the Green Lady
For 'tis Death, cold Death do draw near
And they died -yes they died- at the end of the year.
All under the tree
There sits a Green Lady.
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This unusual song comes from the folklorist Ruth L. Tongue's autobiographical
book, The Chime Child, or, Somerset
Singers (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968). Ms. Tongue apparantly
learned it from "Isaiah Sully" (an alias),
1825-1923, "Singer, Mummer, Morrisman" and reputed possessor of dark
powers, who lived in Taunton Deane, West
Somerset.
Ms. Tongue remarks, "Verses 2 and 3 are compiled from lines
and fragments of the much longer ballad "Isaiah" sang in
tantalizing occasional phrases during the period 1904 to about 1919."
She goes on to say: "A chilling but fairly complete picture of a dangerous nature spirit, of the vampire type. Any wood called Green Ladies was sedulously avoided -not only for the fairy claim upon it but in case it harboured such a tree spirit. She is true sister to the East Anglian ghost quoted to me in 1956, by a schoolgirl:
So they looked thro' the keyhole
To see what they could see
And there they saw the Green Lady
Dancing with the Devil in a Bowl of Blood!
There are only two folk tales about her in Folk Lore's early volumes, but in each the hint of a tree spirit is present."
recorded by Hedgehog Pie on Rubber Records
Nothing in 'The Chime Child' may be authentic. Faith Sharp notes in
the forward that she noted the tunes from a tape made by Ruth Tongue and
a friend, i.e., not from the presumed original singers.