When as the rye [reach'd]1 to the chin, And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within, Strawberries swimming in the cream, And schoolboys playing in the stream; Then, O, then O then O, my true love said, [Till that time]2 come again She could not live a maid!
Two Songs
by John Theodore Livingston Raynor (1909 - 1970)
1. Chopcherry  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by George Peele (1556? - 1596), "The Impatient Maid", appears in The Old Wives' Tale, first published 1595
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Lidy van Noordenburg) , copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Confirmed with The Book of Elizabethan Verse, ed. by William Stanley Braithwaite, 1907.
1 Barratt, Raynor, Rutter, Warlock: "reach"2 Rutter: "Until that should"
3 Rutter adds:
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! Cuckoo, loud sing cuckoo!
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
2. Harvester's Song  [sung text not yet checked]
All ye that lovely lovers be Pray you for me: Lo here we come a-sowing, a-sowing, And sow sweet fruits of love; In your sweet hearts well may it prove! Lo here we come a-reaping, a-reaping, To reap our harvest fruit! And thus we pass the year so long, And never be we mute.
Authorship:
- by George Peele (1556? - 1596), "Love's Harvesters"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]