A lullaby that the informant’s grandmother would sing to her mom:
“The gypsy rover came over the hill,
down the through the valley so shady.
whistled and he sand, ‘till the green wood sprang,
and he won the heart of a lady.
“And then it’s like:
“Ah-di-do, ah-di-do-da-day,
ah-di-do-ah-di-day-O!
whistled and he sang, ‘till the green wood sprang,
and he won the heart of a lady.
“And then it’d be like, it, like, there’s a bunch of, um, different parts, but it would be like, the main one of them, was like, this girl falls in love with the gypsy person, and um, her father doesn’t like it, but she’s, but the part that I remember at least:
“He is no gypsy, my father, she said,
the lord of the valley’s all over.
And I shall stay ‘till my dying day,
With the whistling gypsy rover.
“So it’s just, like, a long ballad thing that my mom would sing to me as a lullaby. I can just totally see this being a 70’s ballad now that I think about it, but I always thought it was like, some special song that she knew from somewhere, that was handed down through the generations.”
The informant’s mother sang it if she couldn’t get to sleep beginning maybe when she was two or three (her mother had been singing it as long as she could remember). It was her “go-to” lullaby. She is unaware of the origins of the song, but she liked it because it wasn’t a typical lullaby and nobody else had heard it. She also liked it because it is a long saga, and she says she’ll have to write it down so she can sing it to her children at some point.
The tune of this song is easy to follow because it repeats for each stanza throughout the duration of the song (even for the part where words are replaced by sounds). This may be what makes it enjoyable and easy to pass on; however, the length of it (the informant only knew parts of it) may be a hindrance to spreading by those who do not have great memory skills (the informant said she’d have to write it down). The combination of enjoyable easiness and that challenge in the length seem to make it more precious.