The Pear Tree

Lyrics

1
Now me an’ two other boys went on the spree,
On our way we met a pear tree;
Up this pear tree I did climb
For to get some pears I felt inclined.

Chorus
To me ay, me oh, me ammer like a daisy,
Why fol-de-diddle, to me why fol-de-day.

2
When up this pear tree I got landed,
The other two lads from me they’d squandered;
Were not the pears that please`d me,
But a man and a woman came under this tree.

3
Now with sweet kisses ’e embraced ’er,
Swore for many a mile ’e’d chased ’er,
Pulled off ’is coat to save ’er gown,
An’ ’e gently sits this fair maid down.

4
Now I shook this pear tree just like thunder,
The man and the woman ran away in wonder,
Were not the pears that please`d me,
But a damn good coat left under this tree.

5
Now off to town I ran like fire,
The owner of the coat bein’ my desire,
The owner of the coat were never found out,
So I got a damn good coat for nowt.

6
Come all ye lads, wherever you may be,
Never go a-courtin’ under a pear tree,
Never pull your coat off to save their gown,
For the pears they will come tumblin’ down.

Recording from the LP In Sheffield Park, Traditional Songs from South Yorkshire.

This is a traditional song

Provenance

Though no broadside version of this rare song has surfaced yet, it quite likely once existed. The plot is based on an old folk tale which appears to have been used as the base for several songs in Britain, at least one as old as the seventeenth century, The Crost Couple, a black-letter ballad in the Roxburghe and Euing Collections. In the folk tale versions the hero in the tree has usually set out in search of a lost calf. Tom and the Parson (Roud 1258) in Alfred Williams’ Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923, p190, is an offshoot of the same folk tale. The lover under the tree is a philandering parson who bribes the hero to keep quiet about what he has seen. A New England version of the theme under the title Long Eddy Waltz was published in Folk Songs of the Catskills, Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer, 1982, p489. It only has three stanzas but it contains all of the main ingredients.

Though a scarce song The Pear Tree has turned up in places as far apart as Kent and Perthshire with little variation between versions. A version similar to Frank’s sung by his cousin, Grace Walton, recorded by Ian Russell, can be found in Folk Music Journal, 1987, Vol 5, No 3, p339. Frank’s chorus is unusual. Most nonsense choruses probably originated as nonsense choruses but this one almost invites interpretation: ‘yammer’ is a term for Yorkshire dialect and ‘lackadaisy’ is lazy or idle, hence -- idle talk. Frank’s version is published in Paul Davenport’s excellent The South Riding Songbook, 1998, p13.