This week what I consider to be one of the most beautiful of English folksongs, and which I was prompted to feature by the news of the death of the actor Terence Stamp: many will remember how in the 1967 film version of ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ an abbreviated version is sung hauntingly by Isla Cameron as an accompaniment to Sergeant Troy’s despairing efforts to put flowers on Fanny Robin’s grave.

The theme of maidens deceived by dodgy characters taking them for walks by the waterside is a common one in folksong: compare, for example, ‘Bogie’s Bonny Belle’ and ‘Willie Archer’, both fine songs but neither of which achieve quite the same combination of ribald innuendo and arcadian innocence. The song gains further poignancy from the fact that these days you would go a long way to find a clear crystal stream that hasn’t been polluted by industrial runoff or sewage, while your chances of ever hearing a nightingale have also become slight due to habitat loss.

The tune is constant, but as usual the words appear to exist in many versions, and I have chosen the one I am most familiar with, as sung by Polly Bolton on her album ‘Songs From A Cold Open Field’.

The Grenadier and the Lady

As I was a walking one morning in May
I spied a young couple a-making the hay.
One was a fair maid, and her beauty shone clear
And the other one was a soldier, and a bold Grenadier.

A-walking and a-talking and a-walking together,
A-walking so far till they couldn’t tell whither,
Till they sat themselves down by a clear crystal stream
For to see the flowers grow and hear the nightingales sing.

Then with kisses and with compliments he took her round the middle
And out of his knapsack he drew forth his fiddle,
And he played her such a fine tune as made the valleys all ring.
‘Hark, hark’, said the maiden, ‘hear the nightingales sing’.

‘O come’ said the soldier, ‘it is time to give o’er’.
‘Ah no’, said the fair maid, ‘please play one tune more.
For I do like your music and the touch of your string
And I do like to see the flowers grow and hear the nightingales sing’.

‘Then come’, said the fair maid, ‘will you marry me?’
’Ah, no’, said the soldier, ‘that never can be,
For I’ve got a wife in my own country
And so fair a woman as you ever did see.

‘I’ve got a wife there, and I’ve got children three.
Two wives in the army’s too many for me.
But if ever I return again it’ll be in the spring:
I’ll come to see the flowers grow and hear the nightingales sing’.

Anon