Sir John Barleycorn

[THE West-country ballad of Sir John Barleycorn is very ancient, and being the only version that has ever been sung at English merry-makings and country feasts, can certainly set up a better claim to antiquity than any of the three ballads on the same subject to be found in Evans’s Old Ballads; viz., John Barleycorn, The Little Barleycorn, and Mas Mault. Our west-country version bears the greatest resemblance to The Little Barleycorn, but it is very dissimilar to any of the three. Burns altered the old ditty, but on referring to his version it will be seen that his corrections and additions want the simplicity of the original, and certainly cannot be considered improvements. The common ballad does not appear to have been inserted in any of our popular collections. Sir John Barleycorn is very appropriately sung to the tune of Stingo. See Popular Music, p. 305.]

THERE came three men out of the West,Their victory to try;And they have taken a solemn oath,Poor Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and ploughed him in,And harrowed clods on his head;And then they took a solemn oath,Poor Barleycorn was dead.

There he lay sleeping in the ground,Till rain from the sky did fall:Then Barleycorn sprung up his head,And so amazed them all.

There he remained till Midsummer,And looked both pale and wan;Then Barleycorn he got a beard,And so became a man.

Then they sent men with scythes so sharp,To cut him off at knee;And then poor little Barleycorn,They served him barbarously.

Then they sent men with pitchforks strongTo pierce him through the heart;And like a dreadful tragedy,They bound him to a cart.

And then they brought him to a barn,A prisoner to endure;And so they fetched him out again,And laid him on the floor.

Then they set men with holly clubs,To beat the flesh from his bones;But the miller he served him worse than that,For he ground him betwixt two stones.

O! Barleycorn is the choicest grainThat ever was sown on land;It will do more than any grain,By the turning of your hand.

It will make a boy into a man,And a man into an ass;It will change your gold into silver,And your silver into brass.

It will make the huntsman hunt the fox,That never wound his horn;It will bring the tinker to the stocks,That people may him scorn.

It will put sack into a glass,And claret in the can;And it will cause a man to drinkTill he neither can go nor stand.

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