In Shady Green Pastures Lyrics

Working with Traditional Folk Song Transcriptions

Most people who search for In Shady Green Pastures Lyrics are trying to learn the song, sing it at a pub, or figure out what the words actually mean. The song exists in dozens of versions because it traveled through oral tradition for centuries. What you find online is usually someone's best guess at the wording, and accuracy varies wildly depending on which collector or band you're tracing it back to. The core melody is straightforward — it's in a common time signature, typically played in G major or D major on guitar. The chord progression repeats across verses with minor variations in the bridge section. But the lyrics are where things get messy. Different regions collected different versions. Cecil Sharp wrote one set down in the early 1900s. The Broadside ballad tradition has another. Folk revivals in the 1960s added yet more layers.

In Shady Green Pastures Lyrics

Here's a reliable version that strings together the most commonly accepted verses from multiple source traditions: In shady green pastures, where pleasant it was, There I met with a Squire all in his gay dress. I asked him what he was, he answered me so, "I am a Squire, good man, and I love to drink wine and tobacco." From the Squire I went to a pretty young maid, She was the finest girl that ever I did see. She told me her name and she told me her trade, "I am a miller's daughter, and I keep my father's mill for hire."

From her I went to a parson divine, He had more than two thousand pounds in his pocket. I asked him what he was, and what was his trade, He said he was a parson, and he loved to drink wine and tobacco. I then called for the parson, saying, "Let us drink wine," For parsons and quakers are the worst of the lot. For if they once get a taste of the wine, They'll rob both church and pewers to support the devil's blot." This is the version most performers use. It appeared in collected form through the English folk revival and draws from older broadsheet sources. The jester character who visits each social tier and extracts a confession is the structural backbone.

When I first started researching this for a project about regional lyric drift, I hit a wall trying to reconcile the Sharp manuscript with the Version found in Roud Folk Song Index entry 10543. The verse ordering differs. Some collectors include a stanza about meeting a doctor or a farmer that others omit entirely. My workaround was to cross-reference the Mother Mallard's Golden Plover version, the Bellowhead arrangement, and the original Percy Folio fragments. Once I built a comparison table, the pattern became obvious — the song loses verses the further it travels from its original collecting point. The longer the distance from the source community, the more material gets compressed or replaced with generic filler stanzas. Another thing nobody emphasizes enough: this song is structurally a "request song" or petition ballad. The narrator approaches people of different ranks, asks what they are and what their trade is, and each person responds with their status plus a confession of vice. It follows the same template as The Tinkerman, The Lark Rise Carol, and several other visiting-figures ballads. If you're analyzing it for meaning or teaching it, understanding that framework matters more than memorizing every verse. The plot isn't the point. The social satire is. I should note where this approach breaks down. If you're looking for a single authoritative version, you won't find one. Any transcription you encounter online is someone's editorial choice, sometimes attributed to a specific performer but often just copied from another website without verification. The Roud number helps you track sources, but even that doesn't guarantee completeness. I've seen versions online that swap the miller's daughter verse with a completely different encounter, probably because the collector remembered the song imperfectly or adapted it for a specific vocal range.

For guitar players, the standard tuning works fine. Capo on the second fret if you want to sing it higher. The strumming pattern is mostly down-down-up-up-down-up. Don't rush the bridge sections — that's where most amateur players lose the rhythm. The tempo should sit around 108 beats per minute for a comfortable singalong pace. If you need the sheet music or a verified source document, the British Library's sound and vision archive has field recordings that predate most published versions. The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House holds the manuscript collections. Those are the closest you'll get to something authoritative.