My love he built a bonny bower (Jennifer Bastable)
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- (Posted 2025-09-04) CPDL #86658:
- Editor: Jennifer Bastable (submitted 2025-09-04). Score information: Letter, 6 pages, 339 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes: Version for choir
- (Posted 2025-10-13) CPDL #87131:
- Editor: Jennifer Bastable (submitted 2025-10-13). Score information: Letter, 2 pages, 249 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes: Unaccompanied folk-song version
General Information
Title: My love he built a bonny bower
Composer: Jennifer Bastable
Lyricist:
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: Mz or S solo + ATB
Genre: Secular, Folksong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published:
Description: A setting for mezzo-soprano or soprano soloist, with accompanying ATB choir. The words are adapted from the Scottish ballad 'The Lament of the Border Widow,' itself a subsection of the ballad 'The Famous Flower of Serving-Men' [Child 106; Roud 199].
The unaccompanied version is given for reference. This omits the verse starting 'O don't you think my heart was sore.'
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
My love he built a bonny bower
And clad it all with lily flower.
A fairer bower you ne’er did see
Than my true love he built for me.
There came a man at mid-day hour,
He saw my bower, he saw my knight,
And he brought armèd men that night
Who broke my bower and slew my knight.
They slew my knight, to me so dear,
They slew my knight and stole his gear.
My servants all for life did flee,
And left me in extremity.
I took his body on my back.
And whilst I went, and whiles I sat.
I digg’d a grave and laid him in,
And happ'd him with the sod so green.
O don’t you think my hair was sore
To lay the mould on his yellow hair,
And don’t you think my heart was woe
To turn about, away to go.
The man lives not I’ll love again,
Since that my comely knight was slain.
All with a lock of his yellow hair,
I’ll bind my heart for evermore.