The Old Maid In The Garrett - Steeleye Span

I was told by my Aunt

I was told by my mother

That going to a wedding

Is the makings of another

Well if this be so

Then I’ll go without a bidding

O kind Providence

Won’t you send me to a wedding

Chorus:

And it’s Oh dear me

How will it be,

If I die an old maid

in a garret

Now there’s my sister Jean

She’s not handsome or good looking

Scarcely sixteen

and a fella she was courting

Now she’s twenty-four

She’s a son and a daughter

Here am I, forty-four

and I’ve never had an offer

Chorus

I can cook and I can sew

I can keep a house right tidy

Rise up in the morning

And get the breakfast ready

There’s nothing in this wide world

That makes my heart so cheery

As a wee fat man

to call me his own deary

Chorus

So come landsman or come townsman

Come tinker or come tailor

Come fiddler, come dancer

Come ploughman or come sailor

Come rich man, come poor man,

Come fool or come witty

Come any man at all

Won’t you marry out of pity?

Chorus

They say that the women are

worse than the men

They go down to Hell

and they’re thrown out again.