Maid In The Garret

Here's another song I learned from Trish Doss (aka Ma Muldoon of the Irish Cottage). I recorded it at age 17 (on Original Flavor), but I was too shy to sing the main punchline on something my grandparents would be listening to. My mom and I rewrote those two lines, and it came out awfully clunky. In 2000, I sang it proper.

Listen and Purchase: 2000 version

Well, I've often heard it said, from me father and me mother
That going to a wedding is the making of another
Well, if this be so then I'll go without a biddin'
Oh, kind providence, won't you send me to a wedding
And it's oh, dear me, how will it be
If I die an old maid in the garret?

Well, now, there's me sister Jean, she's not handsome nor good-looking
Scarcely sixteen and a fella she was courting
Now she's twenty-four with a son and a daughter
Here's me [insert your own age] and I've never had an offer
And it's oh, dear me, how will it be
If I die an old maid in the garret?

I can cook and I can sew, I can keep the house right tidy
I rise up early morning and I get the breakfast ready
But nothing in this wide world would make me half so cheery
As a wee fat man who would call me his own dearie
And it's oh, dear me, how will it be
If I die an old maid in the garret?

Well I'm off away home, 'cause nobody's heeding
Nobody's heeding to poor Annie who is pleading
I'm away home to me own wee bit garret
If I can't find a man, then I'll surely find a carrot
And it's oh, dear me, how will it be
If I die an old maid in the garret?

So come landsman or come kinsman, come tinker or come tailor
Come fiddler, come dancer, come plowman or come sailor
Come rich man, come poor man, come fool or come witty
Come any man at all who will take me out of pity
And it's oh, dear me, how will it be
If I die an old maid in the garret?