185
Nobody Coming to Marry Me
The marriageable girl's impatience over the lack of wooers is
the theme of divers songs. This particular development of the
theme was probably originally a stage song. Kittredge in a bib-
liographical note on a two-line fragment of it reported by Tolman
as remembered in Ohio in 1835 (JAFL xxix 187) lists various
garland and songbook prints of it both English and American, one
of them as sung in New York in 181 1 by Mrs. Poe — mother of the
poet, who was something of a stage favorite at the time.
'My Father's a Hedger and Ditcher.' Contributed by Mrs. R. D. Black-
nail of Durham as one of the songs she learned from her mother. "I
know nothing of their origin. She sang them, to my knowledge, since
1862," says Mrs. Blacknall.
OLDER BALLADS — MOSTLY BRITISH 457
1 My father's a hedger and ditcher ;
My mother does nothing but spin ;
And I am a handsome young lassie,
But money comes slowly in.
Chorus:
And it's oh, dear, what will become of me?
Oh, dear, what shall I do?
There's nobody coming to marry me,
There's nobody coming to woo.
2 Last night the dogs did bark.
I went to the window to see.
Someone was going a-hunting,
But no one was hunting for me.
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i8s
Nobody Coming to Marry Me
'My Father's a Hedger and Ditcher.' Sung by Miss Mary Barbour. Recorded
at Raeford, Holt county, in 1922.
Scale: Heptachordal, plagal. Tonal Center: a- flat. Structure: ababcdcb (2,2,2,
2,2,2,2,2) = aabbi (4,4,4,4).