Songs of the Carolina Charter Colonists, 1663-1763

Chapter I

Old English And Scottish Ballads

[2] The standard, definitive, almost exhaustively-complete collection of the old English and Scottish traditional songs telling stories is that by Francis J. Child. It contains 305 distinct ballads in about 1100 versions and variants, with about 50 tunes. Of the 305 ballads, about 125 have, at one time or another, been in oral circulation in the United States. North Carolina shares with Maine and Virginia preëminence in the number of Child ballads reported from tradition—over 50 in each state, many, of course, in common among the three. Evidence indicates that all of the 55 ballads reported from North Carolina existed before 1663, some of them from two to three centuries earlier. The indications are that they were preserved in North Carolina, as in the other states, by oral transmission largely, rather than by writing or print.

These old ballads treat historical events and persons, the exploits of outlaws (Robin Hood mainly), incidents and personalities of the English and Scottish border, domestic tragedies and comedies, romantic and chivalric love and valor, the pathos and the grandeur and tragedy of death, supernatural occurrences and beings (revenants, fairies, witches, dwarfs, goblins, etc.), riddling and wit contests, sea fights and disasters, and humorous or comic tales. The North Carolina specimens illustrate every one of these motifs and themes except, perhaps, the larger events of British history. One of them, “The Wife of Usher’s Well (The Lady Gay),” is among the few from American tradition that Child included. One Robin Hood ballad, “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,” is the unique American text from oral tradition. “The Lass of Roch Royal,” some stanzas from which are floaters, is shared, as a complete story, in oral tradition only with West Virginia.

It is worth noting that one firm date of first reference to a famous old ballad has a close connection in time, and also [3] in political milieu, with the Charter of 1663. This is the mention by the Secretary of His Majesty’s Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, recording events of January 1, 1666, of having heard an actress friend sing “Bonny Barbara Allan.”

THE BABES IN THE WOOD: Originally a long and tragic ballad, it has been adapted to the nursery. See the treatment of it under IV. Nursery ... Songs, below, where the woodcut illustration and some stanzas from the original ballad are reproduced.

BABYLON; OR, THE BONNY BANKS O FORDY: CESPB 14 (from Scotland, latter part of 18th c., but much older); BMCB.I.248-252 (music); BCNCF.II.44-46. When three sisters enter a wood and pluck a flower, a banished man springs up and offers each in turn the choice between being his wife and being killed by his wee penknife. Sisters one and two choose death, and he kills them; but sister three says she has a brother who would attend to Baby Lon. Questioning reveals that the brother is Baby Lon; he kills himself in remorse.

BONNY BARBARA ALLAN: CESPB 84 (precisely referred to in the first written record by Samuel Pepys in his Diary: “Up by candle-light, and, my business being done, to my Lord Brouncker’s, and there find Sir J. Minnes and Mrs. Turner, but above all, my dear Mrs. Knipp, with whom I sang, and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of ‘Barbary Allen’”); SEFSA I.183-195 (3 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF.II.111-131 (31 versions and variants) , IV.57-69 (music) : HFC (tape). The best-loved and most widespread of all ballads in English, this treats the old-fashioned theme of dying for [4] love. North Carolina and other Southern versions, in comparison with British and New England versions, show an interesting addition to the motivation of Barbara’s cruelty. In most versions a stanza contains Barbara’s explanation that at a tavern her lover “drank a health to the ladies all,/But slighted Barbara Allan.” The Southern versions insert his reply, “But I respected Barbara Allan”—no gentleman would drink a lady’s health in a barroom.

THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY: CESPB 181 (referring to troubles at the Scottish court in December 1591); RTTM, 1750 ed.; BCNCF.II.160-161, IV.83 (music). A very good version of this beautiful lament, the North Carolina text tells how the “handsome feller” presumably excited the jealous wrath of the king and was killed by the king’s officer. (As a matter of fact, Murray’s trouble with the king was political-religious, and he was killed by the Earl of Huntly’s men February 1592.)

THE BROWN GIRL: CESPB 295 (1788, related to older ballad); SEFSA.I.295 (te. and tu. of 4 N. C. versions—fortunately, for it is not in BCNCF); HCF (tape). A man who has won a girl’s favor changes his mind. When he later becomes ill, he summons her to comfort him. She laughs at him, returns presents, and declares she’ll enjoy dancing on his grave. The situation is sometimes reversed.

CAPTAIN KIDD (KIDD’S LAMENT): BCNCF II.350-351. Captain William Kidd’s dates were 1650?-1701. There was a ballad about him soon after his death. “God’s laws” he “did forbid,” he “murdered William Moore,” turned pirate, was captured and executed. There are several North Carolina Outer Banks variants.

[5] CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN’S COURTSHIP: CESPB 45 (a very old story, first appearing in recorded ballads of the 18th c.); BMCB I.362-375 (music); BCNCF II.48-49, IV.25-27 (music). Captain Wedderburn seizes a nice lady, throws her on his horse, and sets out for a tough boarding-house in Edinburgh, telling her she must submit and “lie neist the wall.” She tells him he must first answer riddles, and lets him have them in volleys. He answers all, in the course of doing so assuring her of his honorable intentions, and marries the lady. This ballad is the probable source of “The Riddle Song” now widely known (cherry without a stone, chicken without a bone, etc.).

THE CHERRY TREE CAROL: CESPB 54 (from 18th c. broadside, based on an old apocryphal legend); SEFSA I.90-91 (2 N. C. te. and tu.); BCNCF II.61-63; HCF (tape). The pregnant Mary asks Joseph for cherries. He tells her to let the father of her baby get them for her. From her womb Jesus rebukes Joseph and bids the cherry tree bow down. He then prophesies His death, burial, and resurrection.

THE CRAFTY FARMER (THE YORKSHIRE BITE): CESPB 283 (from a 19th-c., chapbook, but an old story); BCNCF II.188-190, IV.119-120 (music). A farmer imprudently tells a chance-met fellow traveler that he has “five pounds ten” in his saddlebag. In a tight place the stranger holds him up. The farmer throws his saddlebag over the roadside hedge. While the robber is scrambling for it, the farmer makes off on his horse. He finds in the robber’s saddlebags “five thousand pounds in silver and gold.” The North Carolina version succinctly titles the ballad “John Robbed the Robber.”

[6] THE CRUEL BROTHER: CESPB 11 (earliest text 1776, but ballad much older); BMCB I.185-190 (music, including te. and tu. from N. C.); SEFSA I.36-37 (2 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.35-38. A brother stabs his bride sister in the saddle as she is leaving home because the groom had failed to obtain his consent to the marriage.

THE CRUEL MOTHER: CESPB 20 (1 version from broadside of ca. 1690); BMCB I.276-296 (music) ; SEFSA I.56-62 (5 te. and tu. from N. C.); NCF V.1 (July 1957).20-21 (te. and tu.); HFC (tape of last cited). Infanticide; ghosts.

THE DEATH OF QUEEN JANE: CESPB 170 (text of ca. 1776); SEFSA I.230-232. Not in BCNCF, but Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Leicester, N. C., recorded his singing of it for Folkways Records FP 40; also HCF (tape). Queen Jane, wife of King Henry, dies in childbirth. Various people try to save “the Rose of England,” but in vain. As a matter of historic fact, Jane Seymour, wife of Henry VIII, lived several weeks after the birth of Prince Edward, and did not die from childbirth.

EARL BRAND (THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY): CESPB 7; BMCB 106-127 (music, including te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.27-32, IV.8-l3 (music); SEFSA I.14-25 (3 te. and tu. from N. C.); HFC (tape). A knight elopes with a girl (in the older versions, a very froward one), riding a horse and carrying away treasure of the family. Tipped off by a malicious old man, father and seven sons hotly pursue. Knight asks girl to hold the horses (in Scandinavian versions telling her not to call out his name) and stands up to them until he reaches the last (father or youngest son). From this one he receives a mortal wound (result of “dead- [7] naming” in the primitive versions). He puts the girl on her mount, and the two ride for his mother’s house, crossing a stream where he explains the red of the water as the reflection of her cloak, and dies there. She joins him in death. The compassionate rose (or birch) and briar entwine. There is a fine Library of Congress recording of the ballad by I. G. Greer, of Chapel Hill, N. C.

EDWARD: CESPB 13 (pub. Reliques, 1765, but long anterior); BMCB I.237-247 (with N. C. te. and tu.); SEFSA I.46-53 (4 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.41-44, IV. 23-24 (music); HFC (tape). Home with blood on his sleeve (coat, sword), Edward is questioned by mother until he confesses murder of his brother-in-law (father in the finest version), then makes his will (in some versions leaving a curse to his mother for her evil counsels). One of the noblest and most moving of the old ballads.

THE ELFIN KNIGHT: CESPB 2 (comparatively late text, but old ballad) ; BMCB I.9-33 (55 tunes); SEFSA I.2 (N. C. te. and tu.); BCNCF II.12-15, IV.3-4 (music); HFC (tape). Usually known as “The Cambric Shirt,” the action consists in a verbal contest between a knight and a girl, of proposing impossible tasks. The girl wins.

FAIR MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM: CESPB 74 (from broadside of end of 17th c.); SEFSA I.132-145 (te. and tu.); BCNCF II.79-84, IV.40-43 (music); HFC (tape), William tells Margaret that all is off between them and that he is marrying another woman. Margaret dies, and as revenant goes to the bridal bed and asks Williams which lady he prefers. Going to her home, he learns that she has died, and he dies of grief. Rose-and-brier.

[8] THE FALSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD: CESPB 3 (a medieval theme); BMCB I.34-38 (music); SEFSA I.3-4 (1 N. C. te. and tu.); not in BCNCF but well known in N. C.; HFC (tape). The Devil and a schoolboy vie in wishing each other disastrous accidents.

GEORDIE: CESPB 209 (text first published 1792; events occurred in 1554); SEFSA I.240-243 (4 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNF II.168-169, IV.91-95 (music); HFC (tape). For crimes that vary in different versions (homicide, adultery, stealing king’s steeds), Geordie is condemned to die. His lady ransoms him by shaking down the courtiers, or she fails to do so, and he is hanged “with a white silken cord” or in gold chains (the privilege of a duke).

GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR: CESPB 275 (earliest text dated 1769, but the plot goes back to an Italian story-teller, Straparola, of the 16th century and to the Orient): BCNCF II.183-185, IV.112 (music). While the Old Woman is cooking her Old Man’s pudding, the door blows open, and she curtly orders him to bar it. He refuses, they fall into dispute, and make “a paction them between” that the first to speak must bar the door. Robbers come in, think the silent couple both deaf and dumb, and proceed to eat the Old Man’s pudding, shave him with gravy for lather, and kiss his wife. He explodes in action and words. The Old Woman says, “Get up and bar the door.” (See A. P. Hudson’s Get Up and Bar the Door) a Farce of Mississippi Folk Life, The Carolina Play Book, December 1930, reprinted in F. H. Koch’s American Folk Plays, New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1939.

THE GREY COCK: CESPB 248 (text of 1769, with a background of ancient belief and custom); SEFSA I.259-260. [9] Not in BCNCF, alas, this beautiful song was recorded by Sharp from the singing of Mrs. Jane Gentry, Hot Springs, N. C., in 1916. It is a ballad of the aube (i.e., dawn song) type. A man calls at his sweetheart’s door at night, she admits him to her bower, and they settle down for the night, with the conventional understanding that he must leave at cockcrow for dawn. But the local rooster is not so knowledgeable as Chaucer’s Chanticleer; But him a-being young, he crowed very soon!

(Compare the similar situation in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, III.v.11:

Some older English versions make the man a revenant, thus turning the story into the eery supernatural. But in the North Carolina version the lovers are healthy and eager.

THE GYPSY LADDIE: CESPB 200 (text in RTTM 1740, but some versions refer to 16th-c. Scottish family troubles); SEFSA I.233-239; BCNCF II. 161-169, IV.84-91 (music); HCF tapes, including one version from an English gypsy). Black Jack Davy charms the lady of the house (“coost the glamour o’er her”) and elopes with her. Husband pursues and tries to persuade her to return (goosefeather beds for the cold, cold ground with the Gypsy Davy), but she prefers the Romany life. One of the most thoroughly Americanized ballads.

[10] JAMES HARRIS (THE DAEMON LOVER, THE HOUSE CARPENTER): CESPB 243 (in Pepys Ballads, 2nd half 17th c.); SEFSA I.244-258 (11 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.171-180, IV.95-101 (music); HFC (tape). Usually known in North Carolina as “The House Carpenter,” which lacks Scott’s “daemon,” it tells of a sailor who, parting from his dear, is so long absent that she marries a house carpenter and has children by him. When the sailor returns, he persuades her to elope with him, and there are dire happenings at sea.

KATHARINE JAFFRAY: CESPB 221 (Herd’s MSS ca. 1776); BCNCF II.169-171. The basis of Scott’s “Lochinvar.” A man from the South Countrie comes a-wooing Katharine’s parents for her, with their full approval, but the local boy asks her, and at the critical time “throwed her up across his horse.... And galloped off across the border.”

KING HENRY FIFTH’S CONQUEST OF FRANCE: CESPB 164; not in BCNCF, but there are 2 texts with music in M. E. Henry’s Folksongs from the Southern Highlands (New York, n.d.), pp. 106-109. Story about the tennis balls.

KNIGHT AND SHEPHERD’S DAUGHTER: CESPB 110 (quoted in part in 1621); BCNCF II.149-151. Somewhat analagous to Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” the ballad tells about how a soldier seduces a farmer’s daughter and takes French leave of her. When the girl complains to the king, the king enforces marriage. When the soldier complains that but for this contretemps he “could ‘a’ married a king’s daughter,” the girl assures him, “My father is a king.”

LADY ALICE: CESPB 85 (earliest text in Robert Bell’s Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of [11] England, but evidently much older in sentiment and style); SEFSA I.196-199 (5 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.131-140, IV.69-74 (music). More popular in the South than anywhere else, it is usually known as “Giles Collins.” Seeing a coffin approach her on the shoulders of the bearers, Lady Alice asks who is in it. When told that it is Giles Collins, who for love of her did die, she bids the bearers set it down and open it, kisses his “clay-cold” lips, and says, “My body must lie by hisn.” Rose and briar.

LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF KNIGHT: CESPB 4 (earliest text 18th c., but the ballad is much older); BMCB I.39-100 (142 tunes, some from N. C.); SEFSA I.13; BCNCF II.15-26, IV.2-8 (music); HCF (tape). Often known in North Carolina as “Pretty Polly” or “The King’s Seven Daughters.” Perhaps the most widely known of all ballads, it tells how a knight entices a willing girl to run away with him, then tries to drown her, telling her first to take off her costly clothes. When he turns his back like a gentleman, she makes a flying tackle, knocks him into the sea and drowns him. In some versions, the girl returning home late has to bribe a parrot not to tell parents on her.

LAMKIN: CESPB 93 (first pub. 1806, but already long in tradition); SEFSA I.201-207 (te. and tu., 1 from N.C.); BCNCF II.140-143, IV.74-76 (music). “Bolakins” or “Bolamkin,” as it is usually known in North Carolina, is a savage story of a mason who, denied payment for building a castle, enters it in the absence of the debtor lord, and, with the connivance of a nurse, kills the lord’s baby to make her come downstairs, then kills her. The scene of Bolakins singing and the nurse rocking while the baby’s blood trickles from the cradle is one of the cruelest in [12] balladry. One theory is that Bolakins wanted the blood to mix with his mortar.

THE LASS OF ROCH ROYAL: CESPB 76 (earliest text from MS of early 18th c.); BCNCF II.88-92, IV.47-48 (music). The “Who-will-shoe-my-pretty-little-foot” stanzas appearing in many songs and sometimes alone were probably derived from this ballad. It is seldom that anything more of the ballad of which they were a part is found. But North Carolina shares with West Virginia the distinction of having preserved a genuine full version. In this, a girl about to become a mother seeks her lover in her time of need. The lover’s mother, impersonating him, sends her away from the door. He learns of the situation too late; the mother and the newly-born baby are dead when he finds them.

LITTLE MUSGRAVE AND LADY BARNARD (LITTLE MATTIE GROVES): CESPB 81 (quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play Knight of the Burning Pestle, ca. 1611); SEFSA I.162-182 (4 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.101-111, IV.53-57 (music); HFC (tape). An ironically humorous and grimly tragic story of infidelity. While Little Mattie Groves watches the ladies go into church, Lord Daniel’s wife “gives him the eye” and makes an assignation with him for that night in her secret bower. Lord Daniel’s page, a devoted and persistent fellow, overhears and reports. The hunt is up, and the lovers are surrounded in bed together. Lord Daniel offers the defenseless Mattie (“I ain’t even got a knife”) his choice of two swords, and at it they go. Little Mattie is killed. “Which now do you love the best?” The defiant lady kisses his dead lips. Lord Daniel “split her head in twain,” then turned “the point toward his heart.” The two lovers are buried together, the lady on the sunny side because she outranked Little Mattie.

[13] LORD LOVEL: CESPB 75 (earliest text dated 1770); SEFSA I.146-149 (music); BCNCF II.84-88, IV.43-47 (music); HFC (tape). A tragedy of loving hope deferred. Prior to marriage, Lord Lovel sets out on his travels, promising to return and leaving Lady Nancy to pine for him. Too late, he rides home, to meet her funeral procession, kisses her cold lips, and dies. Rose-and-briar ending. The picture of Lord Lovel standing at his castle gate combing the mane of his milk-white steed and the pathos of the story, set to a somewhat incongruously gay little tune, have made “Lord Lovel” a parlor favorite.

LORD RANDAL: CESPB 12 (texts traced back to latter end of 18th c., but an Italian version, possibly the source of the English ballad, dates back to 1656); BMCB.I.191-225 (music—some N.C. te. and tu.); SEFSA I.38-45 (5 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.39-41, IV.19-24 (music); HCF (tape). Lord Randal, coming home ill after hunting, and reporting that he dined with his true-love, tells his questioning mother that his true-love poisoned him, and, making his will, leaves a curse to true-love. The tragic old ballad has been cut down to nursery size. “Billy Boy” is related to it (BMCB,I. 226-236, with N. C. te. and tu.)

LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET (ELEANOR): CESPB 73 (from Percy’s Reliques, 1765); SEFSA I.115-131 (te. and tu.) BCNCF II.69-79, IV.30-43 (music); HFC (tape). Next to “Bonny Barbara Allan” in popularity, this ballad, too, tells of thwarted love. Lord Thomas, having to choose between beauty and property, at the advice of his mother chooses the Brown Girl with houses and lands, announces his choice to Annet (Eleanor). She instantly decides to go to the wedding, and, assisted by her fairy godmother, no [14] doubt, dazzles the eyes of the wedding party. A catty remark by the Brown Girl and a hot retort by Annet start an explosion which ends in the death of all three (in some versions the guests kicking the decapitated Brown Girl’s head “agin the wall”). Rose-and-briar. Names and details have undergone hundreds of mutations.

THE MERMAID: CESPB 289 (17th c. broadside); SEFSA I.291-293 (te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.195-198, IV.124-125 (music). It is bad luck for a ship to sight a mermaid. An English ship does, with disastrous results, as mate, boatswain, captain, and cabin-boy bewail their fate and describe the sorrow of their families in Plymouth or some other seaport town. Some versions have a fine chantey chorus, but not the North Carolina ones.

OUR GOODMAN: CESPB 274 (1776, but with a continental background much anterior); SEFSA I.267-270 (te. and tu.); BCNCF II.181-183, IV.103-111 (music); HFC (tape). The most popular of the ribald ballads in CESPB (9 different versions with tunes in BCNCF II, IV). This tells about the suspicious objects Our Goodman sees when he comes home (usually drunk in the North Carolina version) at night, and relates his wife’s explanations and his pungent criticisms thereof. Many of the American versions are bawdy; North Carolina’s share honors in this respect.

QUEEN ELEANOR’S CONFESSION: CESPB 156 (earliest text a broadside, 1685); BCNCF II.160 (with records of its having been sung in N. C. but with no texts or music). On learning that Queen Eleanor is sick, suspicious King Henry proposes to suspected Earl Martial that the two dress up as French friars and hear the Queen’s confession. He [15] promises not to act on it. In the confessional the Queen admits intimacy with the Earl, his paternity of one boy playing in the courtyard and her love for him and her hatred for her legitimate son, and her poisoning of Fair Rosamond. But the King’s hands are tied by his oath.

RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED: CESPB 1 (earliest text 17th c. broadside); BMCB I.3-8 (music); NCF.IX.1.19-20. Known in North Carolina as “The Devil’s Nine Questions,” this ballad consists of a riddle contest between a girl and the Devil, in which she must answer his riddles or become his mistress. She does and puts the Devil to flight by calling his name at the end.

ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE: CESPB 118 (Percy Folio MS, 1650); BCNCF II.151-152. Perhaps less than half a dozen of the forty Robin Hood ballads survived in American oral tradition. This is the only text of “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne” that has been found in America. Incomplete, still it tells the gist of the story. Wandering in the forest, Robin Hood meets a stranger who confides, “I am in search of an outlaw bold.” When Robin Hood admits that he “was the outlaw bold” and the two fight, “the stranger of old/Was slain by the outlaw bold.” The North Carolina version came from Marion.

ROBIN HOOD RESCUING THREE SQUIRES (WIDOW’S THREE SONS): CESPB 140 (Percy Folio MS, 1650); BCNCF II.152-155, IV.81-82. The second Robin Hood ballad recovered from North Carolina oral tradition, this tells the story in full, though with some garbling of details, as might be expected. Bold Robin Hood, meeting a poor woman, learns that she is weeping for her “three sons/ [16] That has to be hung today.” “Putting on to Noutongain [Nottingham, of course] town,” he meets “a poor old boobagger” (beggar), exchanges clothing with him, and asks “the old town sheriff” for the honor of hanging the three prisoners (the widow’s sons). Granted the favor, instead of carrying it out, he “wund his horn unto his mouth/And he lowed blasted” for his men, who “Came marching in a row,” and “borrowed” the widow’s three sons. Thus, in style as well as content it is good.

SIR HUGH; OR, THE JEW’S DAUGHTER: CESPB 155 (Percy’s Reliques, 1765; but it may be as old as Chaucer’s “The Prioresse’s Tale,” 14th c., which it closely resembles, and the basic story goes back to the 12th c.); SEFSA I.222-229 (te. and tu.); BCNCF II.155-160, IV 82-83 (music); HCF (tape); NCF VII.l.35. This tells the old story, going back to the year 1255, of how wicked Jews (or a Jewess) killed a little Christian boy. In the North Carolina versions the little boy is playing ball, and the ball is accidentally tossed into the Jew’s garden. The Jew’s daughter entices him in and kills him, in what is evidently a ritual murder (“stabbed his little heart in”), and throws the body “into the cellar below” or “a deep dark well.” The dying boy (or in some versions the revenant of the boy) gives directions for burying his body, with Bible at his head and prayer book at his feet, The miracle of Our Lady in Chaucer and in some of the English versions of the ballad, is not preserved in the North Carolina versions. Needless to say, the story is a piece of cruel anti-semitism, as Child eloquently pointed out nearly a hundred years ago. In some versions the Jew or Jewess has disappeared altogether and become “the jeweler’s daughter.”

[17] SIR LIONEL (OLD BANGUM): CESPB 18 (Percy Folio MS, 1650); BMCB 265-274 (music); SEFSA 54-55 (1 te. and tu. from N. C.); HCF (tape); NCF II.1 (Sept. 1954).5-6. Originally a long chivalric story about a knight rescuing a lady in distress (temporarily up a tree) from a wild boar, then killing a giant or wild woman who owned the boar, “Old Bangum,” as it is known in North Carolina, settles for the boar fight in a jolly nursery song.

SIR PATRICK SPENS: CESPB 58 (in Percy’s Reliques, 1765; but there is some ground for connecting the story with Scottish-Norwegian court relations in the 13th c.); BCNCF II.63-65, IV.29 (music). The “grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens” (as Samuel Taylor Coleridge described it) tells of a Scots sea captain who obeyed orders from his king to sail on a dangerous mission, of a crew who obeyed their captain, of all hands perishing at sea and lying at their captain’s feet on the bottom of the sea, and of ladies waiting with fans in their hands and gold combs in their hair for their ain dear lords. It is ironic that at Chapel Hill, “under the lantern, so to speak,” Sir Patrick Spens was orally preserved by the McCauley family, but not recovered from tradition until one of the members of the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. [For this exciting bit of ballad news, see Southern Folklore Quarterly, I (December 1937), 1-2.] It had just shortly before been reported from Virginia (ibid., March 1937, 10-12).

THE SUFFOLK MIRACLE: CESPB 272 (from a broadside, 1689); SEFSA 261-266 (te. and tu.); BCNCF II.180-181, IV. 102-103 (music). In style, one of the most pedestrian of the old ballads, it tells one of the best ghost stories. A [18] sailor, parting from his truelove, is drowned at sea without her knowledge. “One night when she was going to bed,” his revenant returns and takes her (she not knowing he is a revenant) from her uncle’s house, where he shows convincing credentials, to her father’s, where the fact is convincingly established that he had been dead and buried for months. The story is made to stick by several commonplace objects—the mother’s “safeguard” (perhaps a riding skirt) and the handkerchief the girl lends the revenant to bind his aching head, which is dug up when the body is disinterred.

THE SWEET TRINITY (THE GOLDEN VANITY, OR THE LOWLANDS LOW): CESPB 286 (a Pepys ballad, late 17th c.); BCNCF II.191-195, IV.191-195 (music); HFC (tape). The earliest text, a Pepys ballad, connects the story with the great name of Sir Walter Raleigh (“Sir Walter Rawleigh has built a ship”) ; thus the ballad is a link between the Lost Colony and the great Charter, cardinal points in North Carolina antiquities. When a “false gallaly” attacks an English ship, the little cabin-boy offers “to sink her in the Low-Lands low” if the captain will give him gold and his daughter’s hand. Little cabin-boy does—in a trice the salt water is in the eyes of the enemy crew, and they are using their caps to stop the water gaps. But when the little cabin-boy asks for his reward, the captain reneges, and the little cabin-boy, refraining from sinking his mates, proudly swims away to death in the Low-Lands low. The North Carolina Outer Banks people know the ballad, where it has probably been sung since their ancestors were washed ashore in the 18th c.

SWEET WILLIAM’S GHOST; CESPB 77 (from Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, 1740); BCNCF. II.92-94, IV.48 (music). [19] Like “Fair Margaret and Sweet William,” this has the return-from-the-dead motif. Sweet William’s revenant comes to Margaret’s window to ask for the return of the troth between them; he cannot rest in his grave until this tie is broken, for every suitor of Margaret will disturb him. She asks him to kiss her lips; he tells her his “bones lie rotting in the sand.” She wishes to go to the grave with his body; she is “ready for to die.” Sir Walter Scott’s version is the occasion for his telling us about the significance of the return of the troth (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, with Percy’s, Child’s, and Sharp’s one of the four greatest collections of the old ballads).

THOMAS RYMER: CESPB 37 (15th c.); BMCB I.324-325 (music) ; BCNCF II.46-47 (no music, alas). The story of Thomas Rymer, the 14th-c. Scots poet’s trip to Fairyland with the Fairy Queen—tabus on eating and drinking, strange sights on the way, and doings in Fairyland. “The North Carolina text is unique, as far as is known, in America” (Belden, BCNCF II.46).

THE THREE RAVENS: CESPB 26 (one text from songbook Melismata, dated 1611); BMCB I.308-315 (music); SEFSA I.306-315; BCNCF II.46 (no music); HFC (tape). Three ravens discuss a slain knight as the pièce de résistance of their breakfast. But the knight is guarded by his hawks and hounds. At evensong comes a “fallow doe great with yonge” (his “leman” or sweetheart), who kisses his wounds and bears him “to an earthen lak” (cave or grave). “God send every gentleman/Such hawks, such hounds, and such a leman.” One of the most beautiful of the old chivalric ballads, it was sung by great lords and ladies. The American versions more or less “ham” the story in “Three [20] Crows.” The crows flap their wings and cry “Caw! caw!” and proceed to pick out the eyes of the knight. The Lords Proprietors, some of whom undoubtedly knew the ballad, would have been disgusted with what their Colonists or descendants thereof did with this solemn and stately story in the boondocks of North Carolina.

TROOPER AND MAID: CESPB 299 (17th c. broadside); BCNCF II.198-199, IV. 124-125. Illustrates the love-’em-and-leave-’em theme.

THE TWA SISTERS: CESPB 10; BMCB.143-184 (incl. N. C. te. and tu.): SEFSA I. 26-35 (incl. 6 te. and tu. from NC); BCNCF II.32-41, IV.13-18; HFC (tape). A jealous older sister pushes her younger sister into the sea or a millpond; the miller recovers and robs the drowned body; both culprits are suitably punished.

THE TWA BROTHERS: CESPB 49 (first dated text ca. 1817, but much older); BMCB I.362-381 (music); BCNCF II.48-49, IV. 25-27. While two brothers are wrestling or otherwise playing, one stabs the other to death, and while the survivor is tending the wound, the dying boy sends messages to loved ones.

THE UNQUIET GRAVE: CESPB 78 (not appearing in a written text until 1868, but on the evidence of superstition it is very old); BCNCF II.94-95. In its music and treatment of the situation, one of the noblest and most moving of the ballads about the returning dead, it tells about the reproach of a dead woman to her lover, who has grieved for her too long, and her sad denial of the hope of reunion after death. (See the beautiful rendition of it by [21] Andrew Rowan Summers, of Virginia, in the Album The Unquiet Grave, Folkways, FP 64.)

THE WEE WEE MAN: CESPB 38 (related to a poem of 14th c.) BMCB I.326 (music); BCNCF II.47-48 (no music). About a creature who looks like a pigmy or a troll but can do feats of strength; he vanishes among the fairies in the twinkling of an eye.

THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL: CESPB 79 (Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1802, but doubtless old even then); SEFSA I.150-160 (9 te. and tu. from N.C.); BCNCF II.95-101, IV.48-53: HFC (tape). The D version in CESPB 79, one of the few traditional versions from America published by Child, was “communicated, 1896, by Miss Emma M. Backus, of North Carolina, who notes that it had been long sung by the ‘poor whites’ in the mountains of Polk County in that State.” Another story of the return of the dead, it tells about a mother whose three babes went “to the North Countrie to learn their grammarie.” There they died. After their mother has grieved long for them, their revenants appear “at Christmas time” (Old Christmas in some versions). But they cannot stay long for her cheer; at cock crow they have to return to their graves—in some versions her grief has disturbed their rest.

THE WIFE WRAPT IN WETHER’S SKIN: CESPB 277 (pub. 1806, but the story goes back to the late Middle Ages); SEFSA I.271-274 (te. and tu.); BCNCF II.185-188, IV.113-116 (music); HFC (tape). The wife refuses to cook or brew “for spoiling of her comely hue.” The husband goes out to his sheep pen, kills a wether, strips off the skin, wraps it around the wife’s back, “and with a switch goes [22] whicketywhack—a man’s got a right to wallop his own sheepskin.” The treatment makes a home-science major of wife.

WILLIAM HALL: SEFSA I.239-240; BCNCF IV.348-350 (te. and tu.). This is based on the theme of the returned lover. William is sent overseas by his parents, to break off a love affair with a lady. He returns and tests her fidelity.

YOUNG BEICHAN: CESPB 53 (in MS of ca. 1783; but the story is related to the legend of Gilbert Beket, father of St. Thomas); BMCB I.409-465 (music); SEFSA I.77-88 (3 te. and tu. from N. C.); BCNCF II.50-61, IV.27-30 (music). Usually known in North Carolina as “Lord Bateman,” or “The Turkish Lady,” it tells of the adventures of a young English nobleman who goes to foreign lands (usually Turkey), is imprisoned and abused there, is released by his jailer’s daughter, with whom he plights his troth to marry her within seven years, and when he is about to be married to another lady, is saved by the appearance of his Turkish lady and married to her. The bride-about-to-be/Came there on a horse and saddle;/She can go home in a coach and three” (or “in a coach and train” among those who don’t know what a coach and three is).

YOUNG HUNTING: CESPB 68 (late 18th c., but older); SEFSA I.101-114 (te. and tu.); BCNCF IV.29-30 music); NCF III.1 (July 1955).5-10 (music); HCF (tape). The NCF version was first published after BCNCF II had come out. Young Hunting goes to tell his mistress that all is off between them, but she persuades him to alight from his horse, gets him drunk as “any wildwood steer,” kills him, and throws him in a river or a well. The king inquires [23] about him and institutes a search for him. A little bird tells the king’s “duckers” (divers) where to look, the body is found, and the lady is burnt at the stake. In one of the CESPB 68 versions, the suspected mistress is made to touch the cold, drowned body, in the belief that when she does so the wounds will start bleeding afresh; they do. The same test was applied nearly a hundred years ago to a murder suspect near Wilmington, and over a hundred years ago in Mississippi. (See N. I. White’s “General Introduction” to BCNCF I.3; A. P. Hudson’s Humor of the Old Deep South, New York, 1936, p. 503.)

YOUNG WATERS: CESPB 63 (Percy Folio MS, 1650); BCNCF II.65-69, IV.29 (reference to singing, but no recording of music). Of the ballad F. J. Child wrote: It “has perhaps no superior in English, and if not in English perhaps nowhere.” Child (i.e., young Lord) Waters tell his concubine, Fair Ellen, that he is leaving to marry another woman. When she tells him she is pregnant by him, he offers her Cheshire and Lancashire both. She replies, in one of the most poignant utterances in balladry, that she would rather have one kiss from his lips and one twinkling of his eye than Cheshire and Lancashire both. She follows him on foot, hanging to his stirrup when she can, endures incredible hardships and humiliations, and is finally rewarded by her gracious lord (who has already been shot six times by the hearer or reader of the story).