Rosemary Lane (song)

Rosemary Lane or Bell Bottom Trousers is an English folksong: a ballad ( Roud #269, Laws K43) that tells a story about the seduction of a domestic servant by a sailor. According to Roud and Bishop

"An extremely widespread song, in Britain and America. Its potential for bawdry means that it was popular in male-centred contexts such as rugby clubs, army barracks and particularly in the navy, where it can still be heard, but traditional versions were often collected from women as well as men."

One variant of the song begins with the words:

When I was in service in Rosemary Lane
I won the good will of my master and dame
Until a young sailor came there to stay
And that was the beginning of my misery.

The sailor seduces the servant and makes grand promises of money as he departs, but in fact he leaves her pregnant and alone to ponder her child's future:

Now if it’s a boy, he’ll fight for the King,
And if it’s a girl she’ll wear a gold ring;
She’ll wear a gold ring and a dress all aflame
And remember my service in Rosemary Lane.

Variants of the song exist under titles including Once When I Was a Servant, Ambletown, The Oak and the Ash (Roud 1367), Home, Dearie, Home, The Lass that Loved a Sailor, and When I was Young. The song first was attested in a broadside ballad dating to between 1809 and 1815. The textual history is complex, and verses have been added freely to versions of this song or borrowed into songs circulated under other titles by oral tradition.

Home, dear home, and it's home we must be,
Home, dear home, to my dear country,
Where the oak and the ash, and the bonny birken tree
They are all growing green in my own country.

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Wikipedia