KATE AND HER HORNS





You that in merriment delight,

Pray listen unto what I recite

So shall you satisfaction find,

Will cure a melancholy mind.



A damsel fair lived in Colchester,

At length a clothier courted her

Six months apace, both night and day

But still this damsel answered: "Nay."



At length this maid gave her consent

To marry him, and straight they went

Unto her parents then, and who

Gave their consent and their liking too



But see the cursed fruits of gold,

He left his loyal love to hold

Her grief and sorrow all compassed mind

While he a greater fortune found



A lawyer's daughter, fair and bright,

Her parents joy and their hearts delight

He did resolve to make his spouse,

Denying all his former vows



Kate knew each and every night

He came to his true love, Nancy by name

Sometimes at ten o'clock or more

Kate to a tanner, went therefore



She borrowed there an old cowhide

With crooked horns, both large and wide

With hairy hide horns on her head

That near three feet asunder spread



Kate to a lonesome path did stray,

And at length, the clothier came that way

He was so sorely scared of her,

She looked so like old Lucifer



And when he saw her long black tail

He strove to run, but his feet did fail

Kate quickly seized him by the throat

And said with grim and doleful note



You leave poor Kate, as I do hear

To wed the lawyer's daughter dear

You shall whether you will or no,

Into my gloomy regions go



Oh, Master Devil, spare my life,

And I will make young Kate my wife

See that you do, the Devil exclaimed

Or else you'll hear from me again.



He went to Kate and married her,

For fear of doleful Lucifer

Her friends and parents thought it strange

That there was such a sudden change



She never let her parents know,

Nor any other person too

Till they a year had married been,

She told it at her lying-in



It pleased the women to the heart,

They said she fairly played her part

Her husband laughed as well as they,

It was a merry and a happy day.



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This song is found as a broadside in Britain, although it appears

not to have been collected from oral tradition there. This

version is based on the set sung by the late George Edwards of

Roscoe, N.Y., a Catskill singer with a fine repertoire of

traditional ballads. It is printed in Norman Cazden's "Abelard

Song Book." A very literary piece, it is interesting to note

that this recent text is almost identical to the set given by the

unknown soldier of Sandgate, Vermont, a veteran of the

Revolutionary War, who published his Green Mountain Songster as

long ago as 1823. It is also very close to another Vermont text,

from Fred Atwood of Dover, collected by Margaret MacArthur in

1961.



Recorded by John Roberts and Tony Barrand on "Mellow with Ale

from the Horn", FHR-04

@marriage @devil

filename[ KATEHORN

DC

===DOCUMENT BOUNDARY