Traditional & Folk Songs with lyrics & midi music www.traditionalmusic.co.uk 
Old Maid in the Garret 
Old Maid in the Garret 
Now I've often heard it said from me father and me mother That the going tae a wedding is the making of another Well, if this be true, I will go without a biddin O kind providence, won't you send me tae a wedding
 And its O dear me, how would it be, if I die an old maid in a garret 
Well, there's my sister Jean, she's not handsome or good looking Scarcely sixteen and a fella she was courting Now at twenty-four with a son and a daughter Here am I at forty-five and I've never had an offer 
I can cook and I can sew and I can keep the house right tidy Rise up in the morning and get the breakfast ready There's nothing in this whole world would make me half so cheery As a wee fat man to call me his own deary 
So come landsman or come pinsman, come tinker or come tailor Come fiddler or come dancer, come ploughboy or come sailor Come rich man, come poor man, come fool or come witty Come any man at all that will marry me for pity 
Well now I'm away home for nobody's heeding Nobody's heeding and nobody's pleading I'll go away to my own bitty garret If I can't get a man, then I'll have to get a parrot 
note:Buchan 101 SS (1962), 60, with music. Chorus only in Montgomerie SC (1948), 120 (no. 197), from Dundee. A nineteenth-century version of a 17th-century ballad by Martin Parker of London, "The Wooing Maid". Ritchie Singing Street (1964), 96, has versions of st. 4, 2, 3, with some differences; and a slightly recast version from Glasgow, with tune, is in the British magazine Spin II.6 (1963?), 13, roughly 1.1-2, 3.3-4; st. 2, 4, 5. MS 
adapted by Barbara Smith recorded by Clancey Bros on Home Boys Home 
SOF apr97