trad
Bert Lloyd wrote on the Watersons’ 1975 recording: “Idyllic songs, praising country pleasures, mostly belong to a time before the agricultural revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries turned the smallholders into a rural proletariat with grievances. The Watersons got this one from Mick Taylor, a sheepdog trainer of Hawes in Wensleydale.” Mainly Norfolk says “There was some discussion on Mudcat whether the chorus should have the line “Merrily upon the laylum” or “Merrily upon the layland” with layland meaning fallow ground according to the Webster dictionary. Eliza Carthy says: ‘They sing laylum and take it to mean chorus.'”
The Watersons: The Watersons-Country Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV9M6x8PIJc
Chorus I like to rise when the sun she rises, Early in the morning. And I like to hear them small birds singing, Merrily upon their layland And hurrah for the life of a country boy, And to ramble in the new mown hay. In summer when the sun is hot We sing, we dance, and we drink a lot We spend all night in sport and play And go rambling in the new mown hay. In Autumn when the oak trees turn We gather all the wood that’s fit to burn We cut and stash and stow away And go rambling in the new mown hay. In Winter when the sky’s grey We hedge and ditch are times away But in Summer when the sun shines gay We go ramblin’ through the new mowed hay. In Spring we sow at the harvest mow And that is how the seasons round they go But of all the times choose I may I’d be rambling through the new mowed hay. Oh Nancy is my darling gay And she blooms like the flowers every day But I love her best in the month of May When we’re rambling through the new mown hay.