Simon & Garfunkel – Scarborough Fair (Full Version) Lyrics
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Scarborough Fair
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of min
[Verse 2]
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
(On the side of a hill in the deep forest green)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
(Tracing of sparrow on snow crested ground)
Without no seams nor needle work
(Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
(Sleeps unaware of the clarion call)
[Verse 3]
Tell her to find me an acre of land
(On the side of a hill a sprinkling of leaves)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
(Washes the grave with silvery tears)
Between the salt water and the sea strands
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
[Verse 4]
Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather
(War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
(Generals order their soldiers to kill)
And gather it all in a bunch of heather
(And to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
[Verse 5]
Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
Scarborough Fair
“Scarborough Fair” is a traditional English ballad about the Yorkshire town of Scarborough.
The song infers the tale of a young man who instructs the enquires to tell his former love to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.
As the versions of the ballad known under the title “Scarborough Fair” are usually limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning the plot have been proposed, including the hypothesis that it is about the Great Plague of the late Middle Ages. The lyrics of “Scarborough Fair” appear to have something in common with an obscure Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight (Child Ballad #2),[1] which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task (“For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he”); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform (“I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand”).
The melody is in Dorian mode, and is very typical of the middle English period.
As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten to the point that dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century, although only a few are typically sung nowadays. The references to the traditional English fair, “Scarborough Fair” and the refrain “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme” date to 19th century versions, and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot. A number of older versions refer to locations other than Scarborough Fair, including Wittingham Fair, Cape Ann, “twixt Berwik and Lyne”, etc. Many versions do not mention a place-name, and are often generically titled (“The Lovers’ Tasks”, “My Father Gave Me an Acre of Land”, etc.).
Alternative refrains
The oldest versions of The Elfin Knight (circa 1650) contain the refrain “my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away”. Slightly more recent versions often contain one of a group of related refrains:
- Sober and grave grows merry in time
- Every rose grows merry with time
- There’s never a rose grows fairer with time
- Yesterday holds memories in time
These are usually paired with “Once (s)he was a true love of mine” or some variant. “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme” may simply be an alternate rhyming refrain to the original based on a corruption of “grows merry in time” into “rosemary and thyme”.
Commercial versions
The earliest commercial recording of the ballad was by actor/singers Gordon Heath and Lee Payant, Americans who ran a cafe and nightclub, L’Abbaye, on the Rive Gauche in Paris. They recorded the song on the Elektra album Encores From The Abbaye in 1955.[2][3] Their version used the melody from Frank Kidson‘s collection Traditional Tunes, published in 1891, which reported it as being “as sung in Whitby streets twenty or thirty years ago” – that is, in about the 1860s.[4]
The song was also included on A. L. Lloyd‘s 1955 album The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, using Kidson’s melody. The version using the melody later used by Simon & Garfunkel in “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” was first recorded on a 1956 album, English Folk Songs, by Audrey Coppard.[4][5] It was included by Ewan MacColl on Matching Songs For The British Isles And America (1957), by MacColl and Peggy Seeger on The Singing Island (1960), and by Shirley Collins on the album False True Lovers (1959).[3][4][6] It is likely that both Coppard and Collins learned it from MacColl, who claimed to have collected it “in part” from a Scottish miner. According to the Teesdale Mercury and Martin Carthy’s daughter, it emerged that researcher-musician MacColl wrote a book of Teesdale folk songs after hearing Mark Anderson sing in the late 1940s. The book included Anderson’s rendition of a little-known song called “Scarborough Fair”. However, according to Alan Lomax, MacColl’s source was probably Cecil Sharp‘s One Hundred English Folk Songs, published in 1916.[6][7]. It should be noted however that the melody in ‘One Hundred English Folksongs’ is not that used by MacColl or later artists.
In April 1966, Marianne Faithfull recorded and released her own take on “Scarborough Fair” on her album North Country Maid about six months prior to Simon & Garfunkel’s release of their single version of the song in October 1966.[8]
Simon & Garfunkel
Paul Simon learned the song in London in 1965 from Martin Carthy,[9] who had picked up the tune from the songbook by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger[10] and included it on his eponymous 1965 album. Simon & Garfunkel set it in counterpoint with “Canticle” – a reworking of the lyrics from Simon’s 1963 anti-war song, “The Side of a Hill”,[11] set to a new melody composed mainly by Art Garfunkel.[10][12] It was the lead track of the 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and was released as a single after being featured on the soundtrack to The Graduate in 1968.[10] The copyright credited only Simon and Garfunkel as the authors, causing ill-feeling on the part of Carthy, who felt the “traditional” source should have been credited.[10] This rift remained until Simon invited Carthy to perform the song with him as a duet at a London concert in 2000.[10] Simon performed this song with The Muppets when he guest starred on The Muppet Show.
Before Simon had learned the song, Bob Dylan had borrowed the melody and several lines from Carthy’s arrangement to create his song, “Girl from the North Country“,[13] which appeared on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), Nashville Skyline (1969) (together with Johnny Cash), Real Live (1984) and The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993).
The Coolies‘ first album, dig..?, released in 1986 by DB Records, consisted of nine tongue-in-cheek covers of Simon & Garfunkel classics, including this track. “Scarborough Fair” b/w “The Sound of Silence” was released as a 7″ single.
Chart performance
| Chart (1968) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Kent Music Report | 49 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 5 |
| UK Singles Chart[14] | 9 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 11 |
Other recordings
- The Gothard Sisters released a folk version on their 2011 album, Story Girl[15]
- In 2017, Norwegian singer Aurora was invited by Brazilian TV channel Rede Globo to sing a version of “Scarborough Fair” for the opening theme of telenovela Deus Salve o Rei.[16]
- Tamaru Yamada sang a version of “Scarborough Fair” for the opening episode of WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?.
- In 2018, Jess & Matt covered the song on their album, Songs from the Village.
