Judy sent me this years ago, with a note asking if I'd ever met a person like this. Turns out I had. Marrowbone and Eighty-Eight, she said, are towns near where she grew up in North Carolina. You'll notice, fairly often, that i print the "proper" versions in the text here, when I can find them, though my singing version has wandered from the truth. "Yellow Petticoats" is important. I don't know how they ened up "silken", but I apologize. A poet of Judy's Caliber does not confuse things like this. Gordon: Twelve String, Bruce Boege: Steel-Six.
Sally's in the kitchen garden, tucking up her skirt,
Pulling tap the radishes, shaking off the dirt.
She's weearing yellow Petticoats and high-heeled shoes
There's a man at her window, but I don't know whose.
She's danced in the sunlight and she's danced by the moon,
Sung every song and whistled every tune.
She's been our lover-- and our friend-- the best we ever had,
But our fine-feathered lady's looking sorry-eyed and sad.
Spring is over, Sally, and the summer's going by;
There's smoke in the air and there's geese in the sky.
And none of us get younger, Sally; some of us get old,
And the rest of us get lonely when the bed gets cold.
Close your shutters, Sally, put the loch upon your door;
No one's coming down the road, no one any more.
There's nothing much to do here; nothing left to say.
So it's off and down the road you go and far, far away.
Sally went to Marrowbone, she went to Eighty-Eight.
Some say she went crooked, some say she went straight.
Some say she's married upp, others say she's free,
But I want Sally back again, just looking after me.