The snow it melts the soonest

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing

And the corn it ripens fastest when the frosts are setting in

And when a young man tells me that my face he'll soon forget

Before we part, I'd bet a crown, he'd be fain to follow it yet.

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing

And the swallow skims without a thought as long as it is spring

But when spring blows and winter goes my lad then you'd be fain

With all your pride for to follow me, were it 'cross the stormy main.

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing

And the bee that flew when summer shone in winter he won't sing

And all the flowers in all the land so brightly there they be

And the snow it melts the soonest when my true love's for me.

A.L. Lloyd noted: “We owe this to a good pioneer collector of North-Eastern song, the soap-boiler and lively Radical agitator Thomas Doubleday, who contributed it to Blackwood's magazine [under the pseudonym of Mr Shufflebotham] as long ago as 1821. He got the melody from a Newcastle street singer. In Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882, repr. 1965) the tune is given as My Love Is Newly Listed.”