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Town of Kiandra (Rocking the Cradle)

  • (Trad)

    Chorus:
    Oh dear rue the day ever I married
    How I wish I was single again
    With this weeping and wailing and rocking the cradle
    And rocking the baby that's none of my own

    I am a young man from the town of Kiandra
    I married a young woman to comfort my home
    She goes out and she leaves me and cruelly deceives me
    And leaves me with a baby that's none of my own

    While I'm at work my wife's on the ran tan
    On the ran tan with some other young man
    She goes out and she leaves me and cruelly deceives me
    And leaves me with a baby that's none of my own

    Now all you young men with a fancy to marriage
    Be sure you leave those flash girls alone
    For by the lord Harry if one you should marry
    They'll leave you with a baby that's none of your own

    (as sung by The Ian Campbell Folk Group)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

  • [1964:] An Australian song - a version of Baby lie easy, which seems to have travelled to the Antipodes from Ireland. The Australian collector John Meredith had it from Mrs Sally Sloane of Teralba, New South Wales. (Notes 'Presenting The Ian Campbell Folk Group')

  • [1966:] It seems to have begun life in Ireland, originally perhaps as a lullaby purporting to be sung to the Christ Child by disgruntled Joseph (in mystery plays and carols Joseph is often presented as a dour peasant very suspicious of the parentage of his wife's baby). It has undergone many changes, as a cowboy song in U.S.A. and a mildly bawdy piece amongst students everywhere in the English-speaking world, besides flourishing in a number of variants (mostly deriving from the same broadside print) among folk singers. Our version here is substantially that sung by an outstanding Australian traditional singer, Mrs. Sally Sloane, of Teralba, N.S.W. [...]. She learnt it in her young days from a neighbour in the small- farming country around Parkes. She begins the song: 'I am a young man cut down in my blossom'. I altered it to 'I am a young man from the town of Kiandra' because I knew a Kiandra fellow whose plight was similar to that of the man in the song. (Notes A. L. Lloyd, 'First Person')

Quelle: Australia

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