7La. Dink's Song (Fare Thee Well; Fare Dee Well)
["Dink's Song" also known as "Fare Thee Well" is an African-American folk-song that was collected by John Lomax in Texas. Lomax's song is part of a larger group of African-America folk songs and spirituals with the "Fare Thee Well" chorus. Dink's Song has three "apron" stanzas which relates it not only to Careless Love (its appendix) but also to the Died for Love songs and ballads. Under the title "Fare thee Well" a shortened version was featured in the Coen Brothers 2013 movie, "Inside Llewyn Davis," which starred Oscar Isaac who also sings the song in the soundtrack assisted by Marcus Mumford.
In Best Loved American Folk Songs (Folk Song USA) John A. Lomax called Dink's song, "a beautiful Negro variant of Careless Love." Lomax tells how he found the song in 1904, when he made his first field trip for Harvard University:
"I found Dink scrubbing her man's clothes in the shade of their tent across the Brazos river from the A. & M. College in Texas. Professor James C. Nagle of the College faculty was the supervising engineer of a levee-building company and he had invited me to come along and bring my Edison recording machine. The Negroes were trained levee workers from the Mississippi River.
'Dink knows all the songs,' said her companion. But I did not find her helpful until I walked a mile to a farm commissary and bought her a pint of gin. As she drank the gin, the sounds from her scrubbing board increased in intensity and in volume. She worked as she talked: 'That little boy there ain't got no daddy an' he ain't got no name. I comes from Mississippi and we never saw these levee niggers, till us got here. I brung along my little boy. My man drives a four-wheel scraper down there where you see the dust risin'. I keeps his tent, cooks his vittles and washes his clothes. Some day Ize goin' to wrap up his wet breeches and shirts, roll 'em up in a knot, put 'em in the middle of the bed, and tuck down the covers right nice. Then I'm going on up the river where I belong.' She sipped her gin and sang and drank until the bottle was empty.
The original Edison record of 'Dink's Song' was broken long ago, but not until all the Lomax family had learned the tune. The one-line refrain, as Dink sang it in her soft lovely voice, gave the effect of a sobbing woman, deserted by her man. Dink's tune is really lost; what is left is only a shadow of the tender, tragic beauty of what she sang in the sordid, bleak surroundings of a Brazos Bottom levee camp."
Later Lomax changed the date when the song was collected to 1908. In 1906 Lomax attended Harvard University as a graduate student where his interest in folk collecting was encouraged by Barrett Wendall. In late 1906 he met one of his future mentors, George Lyman Kittredge. In the Spring of 1907 Lomax was planning to make a complete collection of cowboy songs and ballads of the west[1]. With his health failing Lomax received his A.M. from Harvard in June and returned to Austin. His 1908 Texas collecting trip was no doubt inspired by plans he made at Harvard to also collect African-America folk songs. Lomax later indicated that he had corresponded with Kittredge about his African-America collecting and Dink's Song[2]:
"The lyrics and music of "Dink's Song" are to me uniquely beautiful. Professor Kittredge praised them without stint. Carl Sandburg compares them to the best fragments of Sappho. As you might expect, Carl prefers Dink to Sappho."
Although the song was important to Lomax, are the details he has provided accurate? That Lomax originally said he collected Dink's song in 1904 then changed the date to 1908 is unsettling. It suggests that the elaborate details Lomax presented on Dink's Song (see above) may be recreated memories and raises questions about the song's authenticity. Lomax's suggestion that "The original Edison record of 'Dink's Song' was broken long ago" seems to be a fabrication. The recording device was not mentioned in his earlier 1917 article. It was pointed out by Nolan Porterfield in "Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax, 1867-1948" that Lomax did not have access to a recording machine before 1909. therefore his claim that Dink's Song was recorded is doubtful.
The text of Dink's Song, first published in his 1917 article[3], "Self-Pity in Negro Folk-Songs," includes 3 stanzas found in the "Died for Love" songs. Lomax's text may not be exactly what Dink sang since he edited the text[4] and sometimes added various related stanzas to make his songs fuller and longer. In 1934 Dink's Song was included in the Lomaxes book, "American Ballads and Folk Songs[5]." Here is the 1934 text which included a melody, presumably transcribed or learned by Lomax from the informant[6]:
1. Ef I had wings like Norah's dove,
I'd fly up de river to de man I love.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
2. Ise got a man an' he's long an' tall,
Moves his body like a cannon ball.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
3. One o' these days, an' it won't be long,
Call my name an' I'll be gone.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
4. 'Member one night, a-drizzlin' rain,
Roun' my heart I felt a pain.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
5. When I wo' my ap'on low,
Couldn't keep you from my do'.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
6. Now I wears my ap'on high,
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
7. Now my ap'on's up to my chin,
You pass my do' an' you won't come in.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
8. Ef I had listened to what my mama said,
I'd be at home in my mama's bed.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
The last line acts as the chorus. Most of the stanzas are simply floating stanzas and some (stanzas 1,5,6,7 and 8) are found in versions of Careless Love. Dink's Song has been widely recorded since the 1930s and is also titled "Fare Thee Well." Francis Lee Utley in his 1966 article "The Genesis and Revival of Dink's Song" gives little information about the genesis of Dink's song and more information about the extant versions recorded before 1965. Some details about the original MS have been reported by Robert Waltz in the Traditional Ballad Index[7]:
On the other hand, Elijah Wald tells me, "I have looked through John Lomax's papers, and they include the full lyric he got from Dink in Texas, showing his editing process: first a handwritten transcription of her version, then a typescript that is a bit more organized but substantially identical, then an expurgated, edited, and rearranged version that is substantially the one published in ABFS. The final version is thus to some extent his creation, but all its components were in the version he transcribed from her, along with verses he left out because they were too rudimentary (one line repeated three times) or bawdy."
Without having access to Lomax's MS, it is impossible to recreate the original. What Wald's report of the MS suggests is that the 8 stanza published version is what Dink originally sang although edited. On August 9, 1917 Lomax published his 5 page article "Self-Pity in Negro Folk-Songs," in "The Nation." Among the blues and folk lyrics were the lyrics of two songs as sung by Dink who Lomax called, "a lithe, chocolate-colored woman with a reckless glint in her eye." The first song, "Dink's Blues," was 21 couplets of blues stanzas and the second "Dink's Song" was the standard 8 stanzas of text found in "American Ballads and Folk Songs" with minor changes in dialect. Here's the text Lomax published in 1917 with his brief introduction to Dink's Song:
Dink sang another song of the deserted and lonely woman— a song with lyric beauty and pathetic appeal— and the rhythm of this one she handled in a way that gave the effect of a catch, or sob, at the end of each half-line:
If I had wings like Norah's dove
I'd fly up de river to de man I love—
Refrain: Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
I've got a man, an' he's long an' tall
An' he moves his body like a cannon ball.
One dese days, an' it won't be long,
Call my name an' I'll be gone.
'Member one night, drizzlin' rain,
Roun' my heart I felt a pain.
When I wo' my ap'ons low
You'd follow me eve'ywhere I'd go.
Now I wears my ap'ons high
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Now my ap'ons up to my chin
You pass my do' an' you don't look in—
If I'd a-listened to whut my mamma said,
I'd a-bin sleepin' in my mamma's bed.
In his 1947 autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, Lomax rearranges the stanzas in what Utley[8] claims is the original order and text as it was collected. Here's the 1947 text:
1. One o' these days, an' it won't be long,
Call my name an' I'll be gone.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
2. 'Member one night, a-drizzlin' rain,
'Round my heart I felt a pain.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
3. I got a man an' he's long an' tall,
Moves his body like a cannon ball.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
4. When I wore my apron low,
Couldn't keep you from my do'.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
5. Now I wears my apron high,
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
6. Now my apron's up to my chin,
You pass my do' an' you won't come in.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
7. If I'd 'a' listened to what my mamma said,
I'd 'a' been sleepin' in my mamma's bed.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
8. If I had wings like Norah's dove,
I'd fly up de river to de man I love.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
There is a change in the chorus 'thee' is replaced by 'you.' There are also slight changes in the dialect with "apron" replacing "ap'on" etc. In 1928 Mary Bales, a fellow member of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, published the song as titled "Fare Dee Well" in 1928[9]. Josh White recorded Dink's Song with the title, "Fare Thee Well," in 1945. The melody of Dink's song appeared in "American Ballads and Folk Songs,"and presumably it was the same melody recorded from John Lomax's singiing in the 1936 LOC recording made by Charles Seeger. The "Fare Thee Well" chorus has long been established as an African-America refrain. It was published as a chorus in John Queen's “Fare thee, honey, fare thee well” with music by Walter Wilson in 1901. "Fare thee well" appears in the African American spiritual "In That Great Gettin Up Mornin' " as well as in a number of blues such as Joe Calicott's "Fare thee Well Blues" recorded in 1930. Like Careless Love, the "Fare Thee Well" songs are early forms of the blues. The chorus, however, is not important in this study-- what is important are the "apron" stanzas which clearly derive from the UK "Died for Love" songs and ballads and the relationship with Careless Love, another song with the "apron" stanzas.
Only the "apron" stanzas and the last two stanzas of Lomax's 1947 are clearly related to Careless Love. The "Norah's Dove" stanza which is the last in 1947 but in 1908 and 1934 was the first, was also quoted by W.C. Handy who called it a folk stanza. Handy's daughter included the stanza in her 1922 rendition of "Loveless Love. Here's how Handy printed it in his Treasury of the Blues:
If I had wings like Nora's faithful dove,
Strong wings like Nora's faithful dove,
I would fly away to the man I love.
The last line is echoed in a number of Died for Love songs in a variety of ways. Whether a blackbird or a thrush or turtle-dove or sparrow, all wish to fly to the one they love, even if he is a false lover. As evidence I give just two lines from "The Lady's Address to the Fair Maidens" c.1760 print[10]:
I wish I was a pretty swallow,
That nimbly in the air could fly,
The connection between this Newcastle print that is the antecedent of "Little Sparrow" with Dink, an African-America woman cleaning clothes at a levee camp on the Brazos River is tenuous. The "apron" stanzas sung by Dink are not:
4. When I wore my apron low,
Couldn't keep you from my do'.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
5. Now I wears my apron high,
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
6. Now my apron's up to my chin,
You pass my do' an' you won't come in.
Fare you well, O honey, fare you well.
Whether sung by the great Scot singer Jeannie Roberston or by Dink, "a lithe, chocolate-colored woman with a reckless glint in her eye," the stanzas are an integral part of the Died for Love ballads and songs. The "Died for Love" theme is clearly evident in Dink's Song-- the deep love of a woman for her man, her pregnancy and the abandonment which follows.
After 1947 John Lomax, upon completing his autobiography, searched for Dink and found that she was buried in Mississippi at her original home in Yazoo County. We still don't know her real name,
R. Matteson 2017]
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Footnotes:
1. See: Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax, 1867-1948 by Nolan Porterfield
2. Folk Song: U.S.A.: The 111 Best American Ballads - Page 40 by Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford Seeger - 1947.
3. Ref: John A. Lomax, "Self-Pity in Negro Folk-Songs," Nation 105 (9 August 1917): 141-45.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Nation-1917aug09-00141
4. Robert Waltz reported in Traditional Ballad Index that Elijah Wald saw the original MSS and Dink's original version had been edited.
5. American Ballads and Folk Songs. New York: Macmillan, 1934; compiled by his son, Alan Lomax.
6. It's doubtful that an original Edison recording was made. The few stanzas that John Lomax sang were recorded for the LOC by Charles Seeger in 1936.
7. The current editor of the Ballad Index is Robert B. Waltz. Wald's comments provide no specific details of what changes were made by Lomax from the original MS.
8. Francis Lee Utley's 1966 article "The Genesis and Revival of Dink's Song" appears in "Studies in Language and Literature in honour of Margaret Schlauch."
9. See: Publications of the Texas Folklore Society - Issues 5-7 - Page 99. Utley gives a date of 1928 while google gives a 1926 date.
10. "The Lady's Address to the Fair Maidens," is a broadside printed by Angus of Newcastle c.1780 but dating earlier to c.1760 in a London collection.