Rosemary Lane (song)

"When I was a servant in Rosemary Lane..."

Image by Jean-Étienne Liotard.

This article is about a traditional folksong. For the adaptation by Moe Jaffe see Bell Bottom Trousers (commercial song).

Rosemary Lane or Bell Bottom Trousers is an English folksong: a ballad ( Roud #269, Laws K43) that tells a story about the seduction of a domestic servant by a sailor. According to Roud and Bishop^[1]

"An extremely widespread song, in Britain and America. Its potential for bawdry means that it was popular in male-centred contexts such as rugby clubs, army barracks and particularly in the navy, where it can still be heard, but traditional versions were often collected from women as well as men."

Synopsis

One variant of the song begins with the words:

The sailor seduces the servant and makes grand promises of money as he departs, but in fact he leaves her pregnant and alone to ponder her child's future:

1. ^ The Servant of Rosemary Lane at folkinfo.org; accessed Mar. 22, 2009.

Variants and adaptations

Variants

Variants of the song exist under titles including Once When I Was a Servant, Ambletown, The Oak and the Ash, Home, Dearie, Home, The Lass that Loved a Sailor, and When I was Young.^[2][3] The song first was attested in a broadside ballad dating to between 1809 and 1815.^[2] The textual history is complex, and verses have been added freely to versions of this song or borrowed into songs circulated under other titles by oral tradition.^[3]

• Some variants make the sailor a "bold sea captain".^[4]

• The variants Home, Dear Home (or Home, Dearie, Home) and The Oak and the Ash include an additional refrain, from which these versions take their name:

1. ^ Ballads Catalogue: Harding B 17(130a), Bodleian Library, Oxford University

• Although the variant Ambletown changes the song's perspective to a narration of a letter informing a sailor that he has fathered a child, many lyrics, including the verse "If he's a boy, he'll fight for the king[ ...]", remain constant.^[3]

• The song's lyrics are occasionally set to the tune of Rock-a-bye Baby.^[5]

Adaptations

• William E. Henley used portions of the text of this cluster of folksongs for his poem "O Falmouth Is a Fine Town":^[3]

1. ^ William Ernest Henley, O Falmouth is a Fine Town

• Bell Bottom Trousers, a sea-shanty adaptation of the song, shares the basic plot, though the variant in question turns the tone from wistful regret to bawdiness:

• The United States Army's 10th Mountain Division further adapted Bell Bottom Trousers for a mountain-village setting (e.g., "I was a barmaid in a mountain inn..." and "...and if you have a son, send the bastard off to ski"), in the process borrowing Falmouth's "as his daddie used to do" theme. The result, titled Ninety Pounds of Rucksack, became the 10th Mountain's official marching/drinking song.^[6]

Performances

Performers who have recorded this song or one of its variants include Anne Briggs, Liam Clancy, Chris Willett,^[3] Bert Jansch,^[7] and Espers.,^[8] Paul Wassif,^[9]

References