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.
The famous version of Scarborough fair is an arrangement of an old English song and Paul Simon’s anti war song The side of a hill. Simon first heard Scarborough fair through guitarist Martin Carthy, but neglected to mention its origins. It took until the year 2000 to settle the resulting dispute. Interestingly, Bob Dylan used a different arrangement of the same song in his Girl from the north country from 1963.
And Martin Carthy didn’t make up the words to the song himself. Those were based on a children’s song about an elf demanding an impossible price for marriage, dating back to 1670. In The elfin knight a girl lies in bed praying to marry the handsome elf, who promptly appears. He sets a very high price though, asking her to do impossible tasks. In response, she does the same with him.
This kind of story has its roots in an even older time, and is a Celtic medieval genre in its own right. The text is full of sexual innuendo, which is not always present in the different versions from later times.