> The Young Tradition > Songs > The Single Man's Warning
The Single Man's Warning / Be Careful in Choosing a Wife
[
Roud 4744
; Ballad Index ReSh095
; VWML HAM/4/25/9
; Bodleian
Roud 4744
; Mudcat 38243
; trad.]
The Young Tradition sang The Single Man's Warning in 1967 on their second album, So Cheerfully Round. Heather Wood noted:
When prowling round Cecil Sharp House I discovered that they have all the Sharp Manuscripts on microfilm. It's a tiring process—his writing is somewhat illegible and the cracks on the film become confused with the lines on which the music is writ—but it can be rewarding. The Single Man's Warning is from this source. It was collected in 1903 from Tom Sprachlan of Hambridge, Somerset [ Roud S251887 ; VWML HAM/4/25/9 ; Bodleian Roud S251887 ; Mudcat 38243 ]. I think Tom must have had matrimonial problems; several of his songs are on this theme. This was a song I thought to sing as a solo, but it was not to be. One of the trials of being in a group, I suppose.
Sharp found no other versions, and did not publish the song; the text first appeared in James Reeves' The Idiom of the People (1958).
Paul Sartin sang Be Careful in Choosing a Wife in 2008 on Belshazzar's Feast's WildGoose CD The Food of Love. Their source is Edith Sartin from Corscombe, Dorset, collected by H.E.D. Hammond in July 1906 [ VWML HAM/4/25/9 ] .
Compare to this Martin Carthy's I Was a Young Man and Tony Rose's longer version Poor Man's Sorrow. (Roud 1572).
Lyrics
Tom Sprachlan sings The Single Man's Warning | The Young Tradition sing The Single Man's Warning |
---|---|
Come all you young men that are going to be wed |
Come all you young men that are going to be wed: |
O when that you are wed and a squaller it is born |
O when you are wed and a squaller is born |
When I go home to breakfast, to breakfast at eight |
When I come home to breakfast, to breakfast at eight, |
If I asked her to rise, she'd fly in a pet |
If I asked her to rise, she will fly in a pet |
When dinner time come to home I repair |
When dinner time comes to my home I repair |
When I go home at night sadly tired from my work | |
O but if I should offer the job to refuse | |
And O if I could be but single again |
O if I could be but single again |