The lyric from “Scarborough Fair” is “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.”
“Scarborough Fair” is a traditional Northern English ballad built around impossible tasks set between former lovers. The herb-filled refrain appears in 19th-century versions associated with the Scarborough and Whittingham fairs, although older forms of the related ballad used different refrains.
The song’s roots reach back to “The Elfin Knight,” a ballad recorded in versions dating to at least the 17th century and catalogued by Francis James Child. Frank Kidson published a widely recognized version in 1891 after collecting it in Yorkshire. The melody was later collected by Ewan MacColl from Mark Anderson in County Durham in 1947.
A common mix-up comes from Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 recording, which helped make the herb sequence globally familiar but rearranged and shortened traditional verses. Some older texts also use “savoury” rather than “parsley,” so the wording can vary by version; in the standard modern lyric, the final herb is thyme.