"Young Rambleaway", also known as "Derry Down Fair", "Brocklesby Fair", "Brocklesby Fair", "Brimbledown Fair", "Burlington Fair" and many similar names, is an English ballad that is known in many locations from south to north.
According to Peter Kennedy, the titles are probably all a corruption of Birmingham Fair, which appears in an old broadside. The tune appears in William Baring Gould's 1891 collection. Versions of Rambleaway have been collected in Devonshire by Baring-Gould, in Dorset by the Hammond Brothers, in Hampshire by George Gardiner, in Somerset by Cecil Sharp and in Yorkshire by Frank Kidson. Peter Kennedy recorded a version for the BBC from Alec Bloomfield of Framlingham in Suffolk who places the song’s activity in Burlington Fair, a corruption of Birmingham Fair, the title given to the song by early 19th century broadside printers such as Jackson of Birmingham.
This popular song was published by many broadside printers and was collected extensively in the West Country. H.E.D. Hammond noted down the song from William Barrett in Piddletown, Dorset in 1905 and Cecil Sharp collected three versions including one sung to him in 1904 by Jim Woodland at Stocklinch, Somerset.
It was recorded by Gordon Bok on A Rogue's Gallery Of Songs For 12-String (1983), The Young Tradition on The Young Tradition (1966), John Roberts and Tony Barrand on Spencer the Rover Is Alive and Well (1971) and Jean Redpath on Jean Redpath (1975).
It was printed in Grieg's The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, Volume 7 (1997), Sharp's One Hundred English Folksongs (1916), Sharp's Folk Songs from Somerset (Series 3, 1906), Kennedy's Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (1975), Reeves' The Everlasting Circle (1960), Kidson's Traditional Tunes (1999), Roud and Bishop's The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (2012) and Beck's The Folklore of Maine (1957).
It appears in the Roud Folk Song Index as #171.