A young maiden is on her way to pick strawberry leaves which, so the song alleges, make young girls pretty. She meets a travelling tailor, who seeks to seduce her. "Who will clothe the child?" asks the young man. "Ah, but his father will be a tailor," the maiden concludes. The repeated refrain "fair face and yellow hair" probably alludes to the traditional view of female beauty.[1]
The original 'Late' Cornish version of "Delyow Syvy" can be found in both Inglis Gundry's 1966 Canow Kernow: Songs and Dances from Cornwall and in Peter Kennedy's 1997 Folksongs of Britain and Ireland. It has been suggested that the song is a Cornish version of the song "Sweet Nightingale".[2]
In her 2011 book Celtic Myth and Religion, Paice MacLeod claims that there are no surviving traditional Cornish songs and that the song was borrowed from England and sung in Cornish.[1] A Unified Cornish version titled "Delyo Syvy" appears, however, on the 1975 Sentinel Records album Starry-Gazey Pie, by Cornish folk singer Brenda Wootton, with accompaniment by Robert Bartlett.[3] The sleeve notes claim that the song is "the only living remnant" of the Cornish language and that it "has never been translated into English".[2]
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Where are you going, pretty maid, with your white face and your yellow hair?
I'm going to the spring, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
I'll go with you, pretty maid, with your white face and your yellow hair?
If you want to, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
What if I get you on the ground, pretty maid, with your white face and your yellow hair?
I'll jump up again, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
What if I get you with child, pretty maid, with your white face and your yellow hair?
I will bear him, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
Who will you get to be the father for your child, pretty maid with your white face and your yellow hair?
You will be his father, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
What will you do for clothes for your child? with your white face and your yellow hair?
His father will be a tailor, kind sir,
for strawberry leaves make maidens fair.
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