Songs of the Carolina Charter Colonists, 1663-1763

Chapter IV

Nursery Dance And Game, Comic and Humorous Songs

[54] AMERICA: See pp. 27 and 46 (note on the hymn “America”), supra.

THE BABES IN THE WOOD: Derived from a ballad, “The Norfolk Gentleman, His Will and Testament,” etc., which was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1595. The ballad, with woodcut illustrations, is in Roxburghe Ballads II.214-221. [This famous collection of ballads (nine large volumes) is so called from John, third Duke of Roxburghe, (1740-1804), the great Scottish bibliophile who among other precious possessions owned three rare volumes of broadsides. The city of Roxboro, Person County, N. C., was named for him, another circumstance showing how the history of North Carolina is connected with the period 1663-1763 and the songs of the Charter Colonists.] “The Babes in the Wood” was praised by Joseph Addison (Spectator No. 85, 1712) as “that darling song of the English common people,” and Was included in Percy’s Reliques (1765). It is in BCNCF II.388 and SEFSA I.209 (te. and tu.).

BOBBY SHAFTO: A well-known Northumberland song not appearing in North Carolina collections but known in North Carolina and most other states. Leslie Woodgate, The Penguin’s Song Book (London, 1958), pp. 64-65 (te. and tu.).

COCK ROBIN: BCNCF IV.330-331 (te. and tu.); SEFSA II. 299, 302.

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN: RTTM 260; an old drinking song. “The dead men,” of course, refers to the bottles under the table.

DROP THE HANDKERCHIEF: Gomme I.305-310; Newell 168-169; BCNCF I. 81-82. Some pleasant folk verse—“A Tisket, a Tasket,” etc.

[56] EARLY ONE MORNING: “A traditional English song, probably seventeenth century” (Leslie Woodgate, The Penguin Song Book, London, 1958, p. 7).

FROGGIE WENT A-COURTIN’ (THE FROG’S COURTSHIP): BCNCF III.154-166, V. 85-96 (there are 30 texts and 12 tunes). First mentioned in The Complaynt of Scotland, 1548, under the name “The Frog came to the myl door.”

GREEN GRAVEL: Gomme, I. 177-178, calls this a formal game. BCNCF I. 56-57.

GREEN GROW THE RASHES O: Words by Robert Burns to an old Scotch air. Text and tune from Leslie Woodgate, The Penguin’s Song Book (London, 1958), pp. 104-105.

HOG DROVERS: See note on history and forms of it in B. A. Botkin, The American Play-Party (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1937), pp. 205-206.

HUL GUL: Gomme, I. 218; BCNCF. Played with grains of corn, chinquapins, etc.

THE JOLLY MILLER (THE MILLER BOY): BCNCF III. 108-109, V. 54-55 (music). Perhaps the oldest and most widely known of the play-party songs.

KILLIECRANKIE: Botkin, The American Play-Party Song, 225, records a play-party song known in the Middle West, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as “Kila Ma Cranky,” and notes that it is “based on a Jacobite song.” (See “Killiecrankie” in “Jacobite Songs.”)

KILLIEKRANKIE: Music as arranged for dancing in Cecil J. Sharp, Country Dance Tunes, IX (London: Novello & [57] Co., Ltd., c. 1918, 1946), p. 15. In The Country Dance Book, Part V, Containing the Running Set, Collected in Kentucky, U.S.A., and described by Cecil J. Sharp and Maud Karpeles (London: Novello & Co., Ltd., c. 1910, 1946), p. 18, Mr. Sharp says he is offering English dance tunes appropriate for the Kentucky Running Set. Miss Joan Moser says that after Sharp’s visit dance tunes corresponding to the English have been found in the Appalachians. (See “Notes.”)

KING WILLIAM WAS KING JAMES’S SONG: BCNCF V. 522-524 (music). Pound (Journal of American Folklore XXVI. 355-366) notes: “It sounds as though it derived from about 1688, when William of Orange succeeded James II.”

“LET’S GO A-HUNTING,” SAYS RICHARD TO ROBERT (THE HUNTING OF THE WREN). (An old nursery song long known in England and Scotland): BCNCF II. 215-216. Story of five ineffective hunters—Richard, Robert, Robin, Bobbin, and John.

THE MILLER OF THE DEE: Melody belongs to the 17th century. See Leslie Woodgate, The Penguin Song Book (London, 1958), pp. 108-109.

O DEAR, WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE? “Tune and words of the eighteenth century.” Leslie Woodgate, The Penguin Song Book (London, 1958), pp. 102-103.

OLD, BLIND, DRUNK JOHN: Not recovered from North Carolina oral tradition, but known in Mississippi. See Journal of American Folklore, 39. 179-180, 195-199. In a long note on this song Professor G. L. Kittredge shows that it derives from “a famous old English song, ‘Martin Said to His Man,’ [58] entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1588.” It is a lying song—“I saw a louse run a mouse.... I saw a squirrel run a deer.... I saw a flea kick a tree..., in the middle of the sea.” One Scottish version cited says, “Four and twenty Hilandmen chasing a snail,” etc.

OLD GRUMBLE IS DEAD: In Alice B. Gomme, Children’s Singing Games (London, 1894), pp. 16-24; W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (New York, 1911), p. 100; HFM 284-285 and other collections. It has been conjectured “that this children’s game preserves the memory of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,” and “it is a fact that a number of England’s texts contain the name of Oliver Cromwell and that the text of at least one American version is Old Cromwell.’” BCNCF I. 46-48.

OLD WITCH (CHICK-O-MY-CRANEY-CROW): Gomme II. 14-15; BCNCF I. 48-55, with dialogue.

SHULE ARON: BCNCF II. 362-365 (an old Jacobite song trimmed down to suit the nursery). Gaelic version in Journal of American Folklore XXII. 387-388. North Carolina version scrappy. For a fuller version, see HFM 275-276.

SKYE BOAT SONG: Traditional and old. Cf. “Hail the Chief” in Scott’s Lady of the Lake. The following is a modernization by Harold Boulton and is reprinted from G. F. Maine, ed., A Book of Scotland (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1959), p. 137. The boat song for the children of the nobility is an ancient type of folksong, especially in countries like Scotland in which the clan is the social unit. In HFC there is a taped recording of “Skye Boat Song” by Mrs. Marjorie Blankenship Melton, who has heard others sing it and sings it to her own young son.

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THREE DUKES: Gomme II. 233, 282, 255; BCNCF I. 89-93.

WEEVILY WHEAT: BCNCF V. 521. Described by Botkin (The American Play-Party Song, 345) as “A Virginia reel related to the Scotch Weaving Game.... Based on a Jacobite song of Bonnie Prince Charles Stuart, the Pretender.” Compare “Come Boat Me O’er” and “Over the Water to Charlie.”