FC2036
I'll tell me ma
Music: Trad. arr. Frances Cockburn, Words: Trad. English/Irish
Voicing: SSAA
Performance time approx: 1m 45s
Range S1: d' – d'' / S2: d' – b' / A1: b – g' / A2: g – g'
Price code: B
Complexity:
This jaunty children’s playground song about courtship, marriage and children would go well in a sequence of love songs or folk songs. Frances Cockburn’s effective arrangement combines 4-part refrains with 3-part verses, moving in simple chords throughout.
The recording is by the Wild Myrtles, directed by the arranger.
Also available for SSAB voices, suitable for changing voices.
I’ll tell me ma when I go home
The boys won’t leave the girls alone.
They pulled my hair and they stole my comb,
But that’s alright till I go home.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She is the belle of Belfast city,
She is courting: one, two, three,
Please won’t you tell me, who is she?
Albert Mooney says he loves her,
All the boys are fighting for her,
They knock at the door and they ring at the bell,
“Oh my true love, are you well?”
Out she comes as white as snow,
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
Old Jenny Murray says she will die
If she doesn’t get the fella with the roving eye.
Let the wind and the rain and the hail blow high,
And the snow come tumbling from the sky.
She’s as nice as apple pie,
She’ll get her own lad by and by.
When she gets a lad of her own,
She won’t tell her ma till she comes home.
Let them all come as they will,
For it’s Albert Mooney she loves still.
Traditional