Ian & Sylvia - Katy Dear (Lyrics) [HD]

Ian & Sylvia sing the traditional song 'Katy Dear' from their 1963 Vanguard album 'Four Strong Winds'. The lyrics are in the video and below with comments about the song.

Note: Ian & Sylvia made seven Vanguard studio albums with 87 songs from 1962 to 1968. This song is the third track on their second album. The next track is 'Poor Lazarus'.

[Vinyl/Lyrics/16-Images/WAV]

Katy Dear (Singers: Ian & Sylvia)

"Oh Katy, dear, go ask your father
If you might be a bride of mine
If he says yes, then come and tell me
If he says no, we'll run away"

"I cannot go and ask my father
For he is on his bed of rest
And by his side there's a golden dagger
To pierce the heart I love the best"

"Oh Katy, dear, go ask your mother
If you might be a bride of mine
If she says yes, then come and tell me
If she says no, we'll run away"

"I cannot go and ask my mother
For she is on her bed of rest
And by her side there's a silver dagger
To pierce the heart I love the best"

Oh, he picked up a silver dagger
He pierced it through his wounded breast
"Farewell, Katy, farewell, darlin'
I'll die for the one I love the best"

Oh, she picked up the bloody weapon
She pierced it through her snow-white breast
"Farewell, Mama; farewell, Papa
I'll go with the one I love the best"

Songwriter: Traditional

Album Personnel: Ian Tyson - vocals, guitar, Sylvia Fricker - vocals, guitar and autoharp, John Herald - second guitar, Eric Weissberg - bass.

Album liner notes by Pete Welding: Ian and Sylvia first heard Katy Dear from the Washington, D. C. group, the Country Gentlemen, who sang it as Silver Dagger. Ian and Sylvia are strongly drawn to country and hillbilly music, which has strong roots in Canadian musical life, a fact little known to state-siders. Ian says, "Canadians hear hillbilly music constantly on the Canadian stations. The style is as important there as it is in the U.S. South and Southwest."

Wikipedia states:

"Silver Dagger", with variants such as "Katy Dear", "Molly Dear", "The Green Fields and Meadows", "Awake, Awake, Ye Drowsy Sleepers" and others (Laws M4 & G21, Roud 2260 & 2261), is an American folk ballad, whose origins lie possibly in Britain. These songs of different titles are closely related, and two strands in particular became popular in commercial Country music and Folk music recordings of the twentieth century: the "Silver Dagger" version popularized by Joan Baez, and the "Katy Dear" versions popularized by close harmony brother duets such as The Callahan Brothers, The Blue Sky Boys and The Louvin Brothers.

In "Silver Dagger", the female narrator turns away a potential suitor, as her mother has warned her to avoid the advances of men in an attempt to spare her daughter the heartbreak that she herself has endured. The 1960 recording by Joan Baez features only a fragment of the full ballad. "Katy Dear" uses the same melody but different lyrics, telling a similar story from a male perspective.

The song exists in a large number of variations under many different titles, and with lyrics that may show a mixture of different songs. Steve Roud observes on one version of the song titled "O! Molly Dear Go Ask Your Mother":

"A whole book could be written on this song and its connections with other songs which involve young men at their sweethearts' windows at night, disapproving parents and silver daggers. Hugely popular with North American traditional singers, 'Drowsy Sleeper' was also collected regularly in Britain and appeared on broadsides there from at least the 1820s"