Scaborough Fair.

Scarborough Fair, is a song that tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.



A song of unfortunate and impossible love between two people. Surely the theme and layers of the song are depressing and somewhat sad. But the reassuring tone on the overall is what keeps it uplifting.

The lyrics however, is anything but simple. It is but symbolic and with layers, its meaning different in many people's opinion.

The lyrics, brackets is the duet part:
Are you goin' to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt (On the side of a hill in the deep forest green).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground).
Without no seams nor needlework (Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain).
Then she'll be a true love of mine (Sleeps unaware of the clarion call).

Tell her to find me an acre of land (On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Washes the grave with silvery tears).
Between salt water and the sea strands (A soldier cleans and polishes a gun).
Then she'll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather (War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Generals order their soldiers to kill).
And gather it all in a bunch of heather (And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten).
Then she'll be a true love of mine.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.