The Cruel Mother

Traditional British/Scottish

This is a very old ballad, found in many forms with many melodies throughout the British Isles. The story itself is as old as civilization: a woman, abandoned and facing utter ruin, takes drastic and terrible action.

Listen and Purchase

There was a lady lived in York 

    Oh the rose and the lindsey-o

She fell in with her father's clerk 

    Down by the greenwood sidey-o

She loved him up, she loved him down

She loved him 'till he filled her arms

She leaned her back against an oak

But first it bent and then it broke

She leaned her back against a thorn

And there she had two pretty babes born

She pulled out her wee penknife

And then she took those fine babes' lives

She buried them beneath a stone

And thought to go a maiden home

As she rode back to her father's hall

She spied two babes a-playin' at ball

Oh babes, oh babes, if you were mine

I'd dress you up in scarlet fine

Oh mother, oh mother, when we were yours

Scarlet was our own heart's blood

Seven years a fish in the flood

Seven years a bird in the wood

Seven years a tongue in the tolling bell

Seven years in the flames of hell

Oh come oh come, the fish in the flood

Oh come oh come the bird in the wood

Oh come oh come, the tongue in the tolling bell

But God save me from the flames of hell