The Traditional Children's Games of England Scotland
& Ireland In Dictionary Form - Volume 1

With Tunes(sheet music), Singing-rhymes(lyrics), Methods Of Playing with diagrams and illustrations.

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	GREEN GROW THE LEAVES                    183 shire Folk-lore), except at Much Wenlock, where they reverse the two verses, and only sing one line (the last) of ' Green Gravel.' But I feel sure they must have been meant to go together (see my note in Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 510), and I can explain them, I think. The ring of girls are dancing on the green grass plot in the middle of an old-fashioned sixteenth-century walled garden : each gets the news of her lover's death, and 'turns her face to the wall/ the old token of hopeless sorrow. Then they apostrophise the wallflowers in the border surrounding the grass plot against the old high wall; and here another variant explains the lament (second line)— Wallflowers, wallflowers, growing up so high, We shall all be maidens [and so], we shall all die; Except the youngest (who will meet with another lover), whether as an instance of the proverbial luck of the 'youngest born,' or as a piece of juvenile giddiness and inconstancy, I cannot say; but considering the value set on true love and hopeless constancy in the ballad-lore, and the special garland which distinguished the funerals of bereaved but constant maidens, and the solemnity of betrothal in old days, the latter seems probable, especially considering the 'for shame.'" The incidents of washing a corpse in milk and dressing it in silk occur in " Burd Ellen," Jamieson's Ballads, p. 125. " Tak up, tak up my bonny young son, Gar wash him wi' the milk; Tak up, tak up my fair lady, Gar row her in the silk"
	—Earls Heaton (Mr. Hardy). I. Green grow the leaves (or grows the ivy) round the old oak tree, Green grow the leaves round the old oak tree,
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