The Folk Show Treasure Hunt Song #11

Track 11 "Mother You Will Rue Me"

Tuesday 25th August  7pm

The Richard Harris Folk & Blues Show/ Somer Valley FM

Online live link: http://www.somervalleyfm.co.uk

The Team:

Steve Knightley (vocals)
Ange Hardy (vocals)
Lukas Drinkwater (double bass)
Jo May (rope tension snare drum)
Archie Churchill-Moss (diatonic accordion)

The Song:

When he was 8 years old Coleridge ran away from home after an argument with his older brother Frank in which Coleridge went at him with a knife. He fled from home, and hid at the bottom of a hill by the river Otter, reading prayers from a shilling book, hiding beneath a thorn bush and watching the calves in the field. The town crier was called in to rally the search party. In later years Coleridge confessed to thinking with inward and gloomy satisfaction how miserable it must have made his Mother. 

The Lyrics:

On a hill in the valley where the Otter flows
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

A Chill and child and calf doth low
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

Where only a torrid thorn warms my bones
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

And the prayers of a shilling book make my moan
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

All for to cause to grieve Mother I escape thee
Run from my brothers and deceive all of Ottery
Frozen and motionless Mother you will find me
All for to cause to grieve none of you will bind me

You call on the crier for to call me home
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

And the blade of a rotting tale sealed unknown
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

On a hill in the valley where the river flows
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

A Chill and child and calf doth low
(All for to cause to grieve Mother you will rue me)

All for to cause to grieve Mother I escape thee
Run from my brothers and deceive all of Ottery
Frozen and motionless Mother you will find me
All for to cause to grieve none of you will bind me 

Notes From Coleridge:

I seized a knife, and was
running at him, when my Mother came in & took me by the arm
/ I expected a flogging -- & struggling from her I ran away, to a hill at the bottom of which the Otter flows about one mile from Ottery. -- There I stayed; my rage died away; but my obstinacy vanquished my fears -- & taking out a little shilling book which had, at the end, morning & evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them -- thinking at the same time with inward & gloomy satisfaction, how miserable my Mother must be!
- Coleridge’s letter to Thomas Poole, 1797

My Mother was almost distracted -- and at ten o’clock at night I was cry’d by the crier in Ottery, and in two villages near it -- with a reward offered for me. -- No one went to bed -- indeed, I believe, half the town were up all one night!
- Coleridge’s letter to Thomas Poole, 1797

I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamt that I was pulling the blanket over me, & actually pulled over me a dry thorn bush, which lay on the hill
 - Coleridge’s letter to Thomas Poole, 1797