The Jolly Beggar – At William’s Place

The Jolly Beggar is the very first song on our very first CD, Celts in Kilts, later merged into our Rakkish Paddies CD. Even William was not there yet for the very first recording of the Jolly Beggar. For this video at William’s Place luckily both David and William are there and we sound much better and with more harmony.

On the original cover of Celts in Kilts William was photoshopped into the picture, with his head replacing a chicken =) You can see the story in the picture below.

Celts in Kilts album

Background Info

The Jolly Beggar, also known as The Gaberlunzieman, is Child ballad 279. The song’s chorus inspired lines in Lord Byron’s poem “So, we’ll go no more a roving”. The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child’s studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.

The Jolly Beggar Lyrics

It’s of a jolly beggarman came tripping o’er the plain
He came unto a farmer’s door a lodging for to gain
The farmer’s daughter she came down and viewed him cheek and chin
She says, He is a handsome man. I pray you take him in

chorus

We’ll go no more a roving, a roving in the night
We’ll go no more a roving, let the moon shine so bright
We’ll go no more a roving

He would not lie within the barn nor yet within the byre
But he would in the corner lie down by the kitchen fire
O then the beggar’s bed was made of good clean sheets and hay
And down beside the kitchen fire the jolly beggar lay

chorus

We’ll go no more a roving, a roving in the night
We’ll go no more a roving, let the moon shine so bright
We’ll go no more a roving

The farmer’s daughter she got up to bolt the kitchen door
And there she saw the beggar standing naked on the floor
He took the daughter in his arms and to the bed he ran
Kind sir, she says, be easy now, you’ll waken our goodman

chorus

We’ll go no more a roving, a roving in the night
We’ll go no more a roving, let the moon shine so bright
We’ll go no more a roving

Now you are no beggar, you are some gentleman
For you have stolen my maidenhead and I am quite undone
I am no lord, I am no squire, of beggars I be one
And beggars they be robbers all, so you re quite undone