This song about a twenty-four year-old woman being forced to marry a fourteen year-old boy is one of the most moving songs I’ve ever come across. The first time I heard Joan Baez’s version, I was stunned into silence and tears rolled down my face. The refrain that declares him as ‘daily growing’ betrays an almost maternal fondness on the part of the singer, making his death all the more sad. The metaphor of the boy as a growing tree whose death cuts his growth short is very haunting. The leaves that grow green no longer represent growth and life, but death. Both the baby he leaves behind and his green grave are symbols of either hope, if you take an optimistic view, or of the same cycle being doomed to repeat itself.
lyrics
Oh the trees they grow tall,
And the leaves they do grow green,
Many's the time my true love I've seen,
And many an hour I've watched him all alone,
He's young, but he's daily growing.
Father, dear father,
You've done me great wrong,
You've married me to a boy who is too young,
For I am twice twelve and he is but fourteen,
He's young, but he's daily growing.
Daughter, dear daughter,
I've done you no wrong,
I've married you to a great lord's son,
He'll make a lord for you to wait upon,
He's young, but he's daily growing.
Father, dear father, if you see fit,
We'll send him to college for one year yet,
I'll tie blue ribbons all around his head,
To let the maidens know that he's married.
One day I was looking o'er my father's castle wall,
I spied all the boys a-playin' with the ball,
My own true love was the flower of them all,
He's young, but he's daily growing.
By the age of fourteen, he was a married man,
At the age of fifteen, the father of a son,
At the age of sixteen, his grave it was green,
And death had put an end to his growing.
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