Note 367 — 43 THE BROOMFIELD HILL
Reading edition
Motherwell remarks, at page 42 of his Introduction, "The song is popular still, and is often to be met with." It was printed in a cheap American song-book, which I have not been able to recover, under the title of 'The Green Broomfield,' and with some cis-atlantic variations. Graham's Illustrated Magazine, September, 1858, gives these stanzas:
"Then when she went to the green broom field, Where her love was fast asleep, With a gray goose-hawk and a green laurel bough, And a green broom under his feet. "And when he awoke from out his sleep, An angry man was he; He looked to the East, and he looked to the West, And he wept for his sweetheart to see. "Oh! where was you, my gray goose-hawk, The hawk that I loved so dear, That you did not awake me from out my sleep, When my sweetheart was so near?"