THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Music Division -- Recording Laboratory FOLK MUSIC OF THE UNITED STATES Issued from the Collections of the Archive of Folk Song Long-Playing Record L58 CHILD BALLADS TRADITIONAL IN THE UNITED STATES Edited by Bertrand H. Bronson Preface All the songs on this and the preceding long-playing record (L57) are members, circulating within recent decades in various parts of the United States, of the classic and authoritative canon of traditional narrative songs of Eng­ lish and Scottish growth now universally known as the "Child Ballads," after the great nineteenth-century scholar who first assembled and edited them: Professor Francis James Child of Harvard University. Child had a vast and historic knowledge of balladry, defying barriers of language and ranging familiarly through the centuries. After the most strenuous efforts, prolonged for decades, to recover every record of value, he concluded that only a handful were still traditionally alive. What would have been his delighted amazement to learn -- a fact that has been discovered only in our own century and which is spectacularly demonstrated in the Archive of Folk Song -- that scores of his chosen ballads are even today being sung in strictly traditional forms, not learned from print, across the length and breadth of this country, in variants literally innumerable! The aim of the present selection is to display some of the Archive's riches, a representative cross-section from the hundred of Child variants collected by many interested field workers and now safely garnered in the Library of Congress. References for Study: Professor Child set forth his ballad canon in tie monumental English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, l882=I898, 10 parts in 5 volumes; reprinted in 3 volumes, New York, Folklore Press, 1956). Mention should also be made of the useful one-vol­ ume abridgement of the complete work, the "Student's Cam­ bridge Edition,U prepared by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1904). The music of -the ballads, a subject receiving scant attention in Child's time, was first extensively collected and published by the British scholar, Cecil J. Sharp, whose English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (London, OXford, Y932, 2 vOlumes;-riprinted 1952) contains more than 350 American tunes for 45 of the Child ballads. A full com­ pendium of the extant melodies, B.H. Bronson's The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads with Their Texts (PrInceton), Is currentry-rD preparation. rne-first volume, printing close to 1,000 tunes for ballads 1-53, was published in 1959. The number of important books and articles on traditional balladry, particularly the Child ballads, is much more ex­ tensive than can be suggested here. An effective key to much of it, however, is the "Critical, Bibliographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of America," which forms the major part of Tristram P. Coffin's book, The British Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, American FolKIOre Society, 1950). - For those interested in reading more about Child's life and lifework, the eighth chapter of Sigurd Hustvedt's Ballad Books and Ballad Men (Cambridge, Harvard, 1930) is heartily recommended. --­ - 2 ­ THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL (Child No. 79) Al ( [(b) "The Three Babes." Sung by Mrs. Texas Gladden at Salem, Virginia, 1941. Recorded by Alan Lomax.] This version of tiThe Wife of Usher's Well" differs in some particulars from the most famous Scottish forms: the knight is an unnecessary intruder, who does nothing useful yet robs the lady of some of her former pathos. Additional pathos should accrue by the reduction of "stout and stalwart son~" to "little babes" -- but. this change, although perhaps uni­ versal in America, is surely wrong, as the conduct and speech of the children shows. In some versions, "cold· Christmas" is,rather, "old Christmas," which recalls to memory the shift in the English calendar in 1752, when those unwilling to capitulate celebrated "old Christmas" on January 6 rather than on the day which was, they thought, only by fraud called_ December 25. The k-sound in "dark" may have been carried over to the next word in Mrs. Gladden's version. Also, the "winding sheet" in stanza 4 seems to have come forward from the last stanza, to the detriment of the sense. Contrary to the versions known to Child, this one in its final state­ ment carries the positive suggestion that "the sons come back to forbid obstinate grief.- Doubtless, in our up-to­ date psychology, this would be explained as a mechanism de­ signed to rid the mother of her feelings of guilt for allow­ ing her grief to cool. The tunes of this-ballad are generally speaking some of the most consistent and beautiful that tradition has kept alive. l. There was a knight and a lady bright And three little babes had she She sent them away to a far countr-ee To learn their grammary. 2. They hadn't been gone but a very short time About three months and a day Till the Lord cal·led over this whole wide world And taken those babes away. 3. It was on a dark, cold Christmas night When everything was still She saw her three little babes come running Come running down the hill. - 3 ­ 4. She spread a table of bread and wine That they might drink and eat She spread a bed, a winding sheet That they might sleep so sweet. 5. Take it off, take it off, said the oldest one, Take it off, take it off, said (he) I can't stay here in this wide wicked world For there's a better one for me. 6. Cold clods, cold clods down by my side, Cold clods down at my feet The tears' my dear mother has shed for me Would wet my winding sheet. SIR ANDREW BARTON and HENRY MARTYN (Child Nos. 167 & 250) A2 [(a) "Andrew Batann." Sung by Warde H. Ford at Central Valley, California, 1938. Recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell. ] Not much of actual history remains in this spirited amalga­ mation of "Sir Andrew Barton" and "Henry Martin." Originally, Henry VIII's noble captains, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward Howard, captured the Scottish marauder, Sir Andrew Barton, after strenuous fighting. Charles Stewart seems to have been bor­ rowed, to his own discomfiture, from naval service in Lake Erie, in the War of 1812. The eleventh and thirteenth stanzas appear to have been taken over from another naval contest as commemorated in "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (Child No. 287), along with the iniquitous victory of the pirate. 1. There once were three brothers from merry Scotland From merry Scotland were they They cast a lot to see which of them Would go robbing all o'er the salt sea. 2. The lot it fell to Andrew Batann The youngest one of the three That he should go robbing all o'er the salt sea To maintain his three brothers and he. 3. Be had not sailed but one summer's eve When a light it did appear It sailed far off and it sailed far on And at last it came sailing so near. - 4 ­ 4. Who art, who art, cried Andrew Batann Who art that sails so nigh We are the rich merchants from old Eng-I-and And I pray you will let us pass by. 5. 0 no, 0 no, cried Andrew Batann, o no, that never can be- Your ship and your cargo I'll take them away And your merry men drown in the sea. 6. When the news reached old Eng-I-and What Andrew Batann had done Their ship and their cargo he'd taken away And all of their merry men drowned. 7. Build me a boat, cried Captain Charles Stuart And build it strong and secure And if I don't capture Andrew Batann My life I'll no longer endure. 8. He had not sailed but one summer's eve When a light it'did appear It sailed far off and it sailed far on And at last it came sailing so near. 9. Who art, who art, cried Captain Charles Stuart, Who art that sails so nigh? We're the jolly Scots robbers from merry Scotland And I pray you will let us pass by. 10. 0 no, 0 no, cried Captain Charles Stuart, o no, that never can be Your ship and your cargo I'll take it away And your merry men drown in the sea. 11. What ho, what ho, cried Andrew Batann I value you not one pin For while you show me fine brass without I'll show you good steel within. 12. Then broadside to broadside these ships they stood And like thunder their cannon did roar They had not fought but two ho!~rs or so Till Captain Charles Stuart gave o'er. 13. Go home, go home, cried Andrew Batann And tell your king for me While he remains king upon the dry land I'll remain king of the sea. - 5 ­ LORD DERWENTWATER (Child No. 208) A3 [(a) "The King's Love-Letter." Sung by Mrs. G.A. Griffin at Newberry, Florida, 1937. Recorded by John A. Lomax.] This is an extraordinary survival indeed! What's the Jacobite Rising of 1715 to Florida, or Lord Derwentwater to Mrs. Griffin, that she should lament for him? The narrative behind this disordered and confusing text is as follows: Derwentwater, a Scottish Earl who rose to support his companion in France, James Stewart, the Old Pretender, against the House of Han­ over and George I, was captured at the Battle of Preston (November 14, 1715), was attainted and brought to the block, February 24, 1716.