A traditional ballad descended from the Scottish song The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie, which Dylan sings in a playful, exaggerated style on his debut.
The words
A soldier courts a girl in a town his company passes through, and the story ends with his death.
An old soldier's ballad: a captain passing through a town falls for a local girl and asks her to come away with him, but she turns him down. The story moves quickly from courtship to his death far away. Dylan sings it with a mock-hillbilly swagger and whoops, treating a sad old ballad almost as a romp, which makes its sudden ending land all the harder.
A traditional song
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A soldier courts a girl in a town his company passes through, and the story ends with his death.
An old soldier's ballad: a captain passing through a town falls for a local girl and asks her to come away with him, but she turns him down. The story moves quickly from courtship to his death far away. Dylan sings it with a mock-hillbilly swagger and whoops, treating a sad old ballad almost as a romp, which makes its sudden ending land all the harder.
A traditional song
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗The same year · 1962
Read onMusicBrainz ↗