The Bonny Boy: A Song History
"The Bonny Boy" is the usual Irish title of a ballad better known in England as "The Trees They Do Grow High," catalogued as Roud 31 and Laws O35.[1][2] It tells of a young woman married off by her father to a boy much younger than herself, who fathers her child and then dies young, leaving her to mourn him.[1] Its earliest printing is "Lady Mary Ann," Robert Burns's reworking, in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (No. 377, 1792), and that text draws on a short fragment in the Herd manuscript of about 1776.[1][2] A tradition ties the story to the young laird of Craigston, married to the older Elizabeth Innes in the early 1630s and dead within about three years, but sources differ: A. L. Lloyd thought the song might be older and not necessarily Scottish, and the Ballad Index's editor is unconvinced by the Craigston link.[1][2] Francis James Child left it out of his canon of English and Scottish popular ballads, an omission that several later collectors and singers have remarked on.[2]
Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Trees, watercolor over black chalk, 1635–91. Tall trees, shown for the song's opening image; the drawing has no connection to the song.
Collectors found the ballad across England, Scotland, Ireland, North America and Australia.[1] In England, Cecil Sharp noted it from Harry Richards of Curry Rivel, Somerset, in 1904; Bertha Bidder took down a tune at Stoke Fleming, Devon, around 1905; and Ralph Vaughan Williams heard it from "Ginger" Clayton of Meldreth on 22 July 1907.[2] In notes for a 1957 album, the folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein observed that the song had a large following in Ireland, where "The Bonny Boy" was its most familiar title.[2] Seán 'ac Dhonncha of Carna, Connemara, sang it as "My Bonny Boy" for the collector Diane Hamilton in 1955, and he also sang "The Bonny Boy" on the 1963 Folkways album Traditional Music of Ireland, Vol. 1: The Older Traditions of Connemara and Clare.[2] In County Clare, Tom Lenihan of Miltown Malbay was recorded singing it at home in 1987.[3]
The revival took the song to new audiences through recordings such as Martin Carthy's first album (1965) and Pentangle's Sweet Child (1968).[2] Shelley Stevens includes "The Bonny Boy" in Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music, a set of thirteen Celtic tunes for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, given in both standard notation and tablature, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "A-Growing (He's Young But He's Daily A-Growing) [Laws O35]".
- Mainly Norfolk: "The Trees They Do Grow High / The Trees They Grow So High / The Bonny Boy".
- Clare County Library: "The Bonny Boy" (Tom Lenihan).
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music".
- Image: Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Trees, watercolor over black chalk, 1635–91. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.