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Wash Nelson, vocal - Come All Young Men and Maidens

from Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 5: Grown on American Soil by Field Recorders' Collective

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For an in-depth discussion of this track, see the album notes: tinyurl[dot]com/V5NATnotes

lyrics

Come all young men and maidens and listen to my rhyme
I'll tell you what you're doing, all at the present time
You're taking from your parents a young and youthful day
You're spending them in folly and many wicked ways.

Now, all about the age of eighteen, boys thinks they're very smart
They think they know it all, but their parents knows their part
No matter what he does, he'll have some place to flirt
He'll order his old mother to wash and starch his shirt.

"Now, stop," said the old man, "Now, Son, you cannot go
The work is all behind and this you very well know."
"I do not care for that, Dad, I'm bound to see my fun.
Now do your work yourself, old man, or let it go undone."

Now perhaps he goes a-courting, no one but him can tell
He'll sit down by his sweetheart, perhaps he loves her well.
He'll sit awhile cross-legged, with now and then a flirt
And watch him chew his tobacco, but daddy does the work.

Now, about the age of sixteen, girls think they're very smart
They think they know it all but their parents knows their part.
To every show and frolic they are bound for to go
For they’re all the time a-thinking they'll catch theirselves a beau.

Now the girls are just as guilty as this you plainly see.
They generally make the matters worse by being most too free.
I hope you don't get angry when I sing to you this song,
But if you do get angry, it'll tell us where you're wrong.

credits

from Survey of Traditional Music, Vol. 5: Grown on American Soil, released August 7, 2023
Recorded by Mark Wilson, Annadeene Fraley and Mary Nelson, Ashland, KY, 3/73.

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Field Recorders' Collective

The Field Recorders’ Collective is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and distribution of noncommercial recordings of traditional American music, material that is unavailable to the general public.

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