70
The Lancaster Maid
Known also as 'Betsy,' 'Bessie Beauty,' and 'Betsy and Johnny.'
This ballad is not only a family tragedy but also an echo of a
dread very real to simple folk in the British Isles in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries — the dread of being kidnaped and
shipped off to practical slavery in the American plantations. See
'The Trappan'd Maiden,' from the Douce collection, in C. H. Firth's
An American Garland. Our ballad goes back to the seventeenth
century, to 'Love Overthrown' in the Pepys collection (Rollins vii
136-8) ; and it continued in ballad print down into the nineteenth,
when Pitts of Seven Dials issued the stall print 'The Betrayed
Maiden' which Firth reprinted {An American Garland 69-71). It
appears also from time to time in oral tradition, more often in
America than in Britain. It was sung in Shapansey in the Orkneys
254 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE
a hundred years ago (JEFDSS iii 244) ; in recent times it has
been reported as traditional song from Nova Scotia (SENS 62-3),
New Hampshire (SFLQ viii 235-8 — though this is not recent,
being from a manuscript of 1815), Vermont (CSV lo-ii), Massa-
chusetts (JAFL XII 245-6), North CaroHna (SharpK 11 4-5), Mis-
souri (OFS I 235-6), Ohio (BSO 218-19), Michigan (BSSM
1 14-16), Iowa (JAFL LVi 107-8), Nebraska (ABS 86-8), and CaH-
fornia (JAFL xix 131-2). A somewhat similar story, though here
the mother directly murders the girl, occurs as a Boston broad-
side several times printed (probably about the beginning of the
nineteenth century) and not unknown in Maine, Vermont, and Mis-
souri tradition; see NGMS 152-6, Hoosier Folklore v 31-3. The
text in our collection has lost all sense of the terror of being
exiled to the plantations.
'Pretty Betsey.' From the collection of Miss Jewell Robbins of Pekin,
Montgomery county (later Mrs. C. F. Perdue) ; received early in the
1920s.
1 Betsey was of a beauty clear.
She had lately come from Augusta here,
A waiting-maid she came to be.
Oh, Betsey was of a high degree.
2 There was a woman lived near the town,
She had a son of high renoun ;
But pretty Betsey she was so fair
She drew this young man into a certain snare.
3 One Sunday evening she heard him tell
'Betsey, oh, Betsey, I love you well;
I love you as I love my wife,^
And I intend to make you my wife.'
4 His mother being in the nearest room,
Hearing what was to be their doom.
She resolved all in her mind
To disappoint them was her design.
5 On Monday morning she early rose.
'Betsey, oh, Betsey, put on your clothes.
Out of this country you must go
To wait on me three days or more.'
6 Pretty Betsey early arose
And quickly she put on her clothes
And out of the country she did go
To wait on her three days or more.
7 His mother, returning back to her son,
But little harm thought she had done.
^ Evidently this should be "life."
OLDER BALLADS MOSTLY BRITISH 255
'You're welcome home, dear mother,' said he,
'But where is the waiting maid. Betsey?'
8 *Oh, son, oh, son, I've lately seen
That all your love is for Betsey.
But alas ! alas ! it's all in vain,
For Betsey's sailing over the main.'
9 Soon this young man was saken sad-
And no kind news would make him glad.
But slumbering dreams would make him cry
'Oh, Betsey, for your sake I die.'
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70
The Lancaster Maid
'Pretty Betsey.' Sung by Jewell Robbins. Recorded, but no date or place given.
The story is very much like 'Betsy,' SharpK 11 4, No. 74, but the tune is totally
different.
Scale: Hexachordal, plagal. Tonal Center: g. Structure: abb^ai (2,2,2,2) =
ab (4,4) ; b and b^ are rhythmically closely related. Circular tune (V).