| AKA | Sweet Rose of Allandale/Allendale |
| Lyrics | Charles Jeffreys (1807-65) | Music | Samuel Nelson (1800-62) | Roud | 1218 |
| Music Hall performers | T.Harris, 1840 |
| Folk performances | Source Singers Edward Franklin, 1907,Bucks, England Mrs Parrott, 1923, Beds, England Bell Duncan, 1929-35, Aberdeenshire, Scotland Maud Ewell, 1941 Virginia, USA Arthur Giles, 1959, Bucks, England Miss Cook, 1960s/70s, Yorkshire, England Charles Green, 1971, Yorkshire, England Copper Family, 1976,Sussex, England Fred Jordan, 1990, Shropshire, England Modern Performances Nic Jones, and many more: see Mainly Norfolk for selected English examples. Widely sung in Irish traditional music too! |
The morn was fair, the skies were clear, No breath came o'er the sea, When Mary left her highland cot And wander'd forth with me Tho' flowers deck'd the mountains side And fragrance fill'd the vale By far the sweetest flower there Was the Rose of Allandale Was the Rose of Allandale The Rose of Allandale By far the sweetest flower there Was the Rose of Allandale Where'er I wander east or west Though fate began to lour A solace still was she to me In sorrow's lonely hour When tempests lashed our gallant barque And rent her shiv'ring sail One maiden form withstood the storm Twas the rose of Allandale And when my fever'd lips were parch'd On Afric's burning sands She whisper'd hopes of happiness And tales of distant land My life had been a wilderness Unblest by fortunes gale Had fate not linked my lot to her The Rose of Allandale
A song which emerged from the early 19th century stage repertoire, which would now widely be considered as “traditional”, a “folksong”.
The Music Halls, emerged from the early 18th-century millieu of tavern singing rooms, supper clubs etc, where then new popular songs and older songs would be sung for entertainment. The best record we have of this period are perhaps the diaries of Charles Rice, who records that The Rose of Allendale featured in the repertoire of a singer called Mr Tom Harris. The diaries don’t tell us much about Tom other than that he appears regularly singing in tavern singing rooms throughout 1840.
Modern versions are often derived from the version sung by the Copper family – which varies only slightly from the original version given above. The song was originally written by Charles Jeffreys (1807-65) and Samuel Nelson (1800-62) at some point in the very late 1820s or very early 1830s, appearing in published form around 1831/32:
The song, according to the notice above, was performed as part of the opera Rob Roy, which seems to have first been staged in 1818. Early descriptions of the opera refer to several songs, but not to to the Rose of Allandale, so it’s possible that the song may have been newly written and added in 1830 or 1831. For Jeffreys to have written a song that appeared in an 1818 opera he would have had to write it at the age of 11, possible but perhaps unlikely.
Charles Jeffreys also wrote Jeannette’s Farewell to Jeannot and Mary of Argyll, two other songs which have proved popular with latter-day folk singers.
Sources
- VWML entries
- Sheet Music: Levy Collection
- Worldcat entries
- Mudcat thread
- Rice Tavern Singing
Nic Jones sings it:
Last Updated on October 26, 2020 by John Baxter | Published: March 11, 2020
