The Bonnie Brown Hare

	This is one of a large group of ballads of young men who rove out, encounter a maid, and euphemistically or metaphorically have sex with her.  Most, like this fragment, are probably of British origin -- we in the colonies tend to be rather more blunt than clever about our bawdry -- and seem to have disappeared in the United States.  
	This text, without tune, is in the Larson "Barnyard" collection, p. 22, credited to Bobby Grant as sung prior to 1952.

One morning in April
At the dawn of day,
With my gun on my shoulder
To the woods I did stray.

I met a fair maiden
Whose cheeks were of rose,
Her hair down in ringlets,
And eyes black as coal[s].

I asked the fair maiden,
"Oh, maiden so fair,
Could you tell me where, oh, where
Could I find the brown hair?"

She answered me shyly.
She answered me low.
"Beneath my white petty
The brown hair doth grow!"

I laid her down gently
Beneath the shade of a tree
And I cocked my big rifle
Above her white knee.

She swooned and she fainted;
Her color all fled.
I stooped and I kissed her
For I thought she were dead.
	Then she opened her eyes,
	Gently and said:

"Your aim is true, sir,
Your bullets so fair.
Won't you fire once more
At my bonnie brown hair?"

"Oh, no, my fair maiden,
My powder is spent.
My bullets are gone
And my ramrod is bent."
	And I cannot fire on.

"But meet me tomorrow
Beneath the shade of the tree,
And if the weather proves fair,
I'll fire once more at your bonnie brown hair."

	Another version and a handful of citations of other appearances of this apparently rare ballad are in Vance Randolph, Roll Me in Your Arms: "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore, Volume I (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992), pp. 43-44.
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