Thomas Rymer (Child 37)
Of this ballad, which goes back to a fifteenth-century romance and that in turn to a real person of the thirteenth century, one Thomas of Erceldoune, Child knew five texts, none of them going further back than the latter part of the eighteenth century. Since then it appears to have pretty much vanished from the old country; the only recent record of it that I have found is 'Sir John Gordon,' which Ord prints (Bothy Songs 422-5) from a Scottish newspaper to which it had been sent by the headmaster of Gordon Schools, who collected such matter from old residents of the district some thirty years before the publication of Ord's book. The North Carolina text is unique, so far as is known, in America. It has suffered a good deal in its passage down the years; compare any of the Child texts.
'True Thomas.' Secured by Mrs. Sutton from the singing of Mrs. Becky Gordon of Cat's Head, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Henderson county, Mrs. Gordon was one of Mrs. Sutton's most fully stocked singers.
1. True Thomas lay on yonder hill
And saw a lady gay,
A lady that was bright and fair,
Come riding down the way.
2. Her dress was of the grass-green silk,
Her cloak was velvet fine,
And her horse's bridle was silver gay
And trimmed with gold so fine.
3 She turned her milk-white steed about
And took him up behind;
And when she spurred her horse's side
They flew on like the wind.
4. On they rode and on they rode
Till they came to a garden green.
'Light down, light down, True Thomas,
And pull that fruit for me.'
5. He ate the fruit of that green tree.
Laid his head on the lady's knee.
'Stay still, True Thomas,' the lady said,
'And I'll show you fairies three.'
6. He got him a coat of the velvet cloth
And shoes of silver so gay.
And seven long years were passed and gone
Before he returned this way.