Ballads & Songs of Southern Michigan-songbook

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	320 Ballads and Songs of Michigan
	130 MY BONNY BLACK BESS This song telk of the ride from London to York of the notorious Enghsh highwayman, Dick Turpin. For a text, a discussion of this event, and references to broadsides and other texts see Mackenzie, pp. 313-314. For a text from Montana, with the same hero and title but otherwise dissimilar, see Pound, No. 69. Version A was sung in 1935 by Mrs. Maggie Loughlin, Cannonsburg, who learned the song when she was about ten years old.


	i When fortune's blind goddess had fled my abode, And friends proved ungrateful I took to the road, The wealthy to plunder to relieve my distress; I bought you to aid me, my bonny Black Bess. 2 When sable's dark midnight her mantle hath thrown O'er the bright face of nature, how oft have we gone To fame hounds bw heath,¹ though an unwelcome guest, To the minions of fortune, my bonny Black Bess. 3 How silent you stood when a carriage I stopped, The gold and the jewels its inmates I dropped; I ne'er robbed a poor man, or did I oppress The widow or orphant, my bonny Black Bess. 4 But fate darkened o'er me, despair is my lot; The law hath pursued me for the man that I shot; ¹ Mackenzie, p. 313, has "fair Hounslow Heath," probably the correct reading here.