8F. Come My Little Roving Sailor (Roving Sailor) Roud No: 542
["Come My Little Roving Sailor" (hereafter "Roving Sailor") is a play-party song and fiddle tune that has, at least in Virginia, become composite with stanzas of 8. "Madam I Have Come to Court You" (hearafter "Madam"). The song is identified by the following stanza[1]:
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, sailor boy, won't you marry me?
Variants of this play-party stanza has been collected in western Maryland and Pennsylvania. In an area of Virginia along the Blue Ridge foothills (Franklin County and Rappahannock County) Cecil Sharp collected three versions of "Come my Little Roving Sailor" which, after the first stanza, where made up of stanzas of "Madam I Have Come to Court You." This was the text sung by Mr. Jacob Sowder at Callaway, Franklin Co., Va., August 14th 1918:
COME MY LITTLE ROVING SAILOR
Come my little roving sailor,
Come my little roving bee,
Come my little roving sailor,
Roving sailor, will you marry me?
Madam, I have gold and silver,
Madam, I have house and land,
Madam, I have a world of pleasure,
All shall be at your command.
What cares I for your gold and silver?
What cares I for you house and land?
What cares I for a world of pleasure?
All I wants is a handsome man.
Madam, do not stand on beauty,
Beauty is a fading flower;
The best rose in yonders garden
Fade away in one half an hour.
First they'll hug you and then they'll kiss you,
Then they'll call you honey, my dear.
They'll tell you more in half an hour
Than you'll find true in seven long years.
The last stanza is from the "Inconstant Lover" songs and is not part of "Madam." Sharp provided two complete texts and one first stanza which were later published in the second edition of Sharp's "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians" (1932 edition, Karpeles editor). The other complete text collected by Sharp follows:
Come my Little Roving Sailor- sung by Mrs I.T. (Lucy) Cannady at Endicott, Virginia on August 22nd. 1918.
Come my little roving sailor,
Come my little roving bee
Come my little roving sailor,
Come sailor boy, won't you marry me?
Madam, I have gold and silver,
Madam, I have house and land,
Madam, I have a world of pleasure,
All shall be at your command.
What cares I for your gold and silver?
What cares I for your house and land?
What cares I for your world of pleasure?
All I want is a handsome man.
Madam, do not stand on beauty,
Beauty is a fading flower;
For the reddest rose in yonders garden
Will fade away in one half hour.
Two other versions of the identifying stanza have been collected in the US. Neither of the two versions has stanzas from "Madam" but both may be considered variants of the song. Florence Warnick in her JAF article, "Play-Party Songs in Western Maryland" (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 54, No. 213/214 (Jul. - Dec., 1941), pp. 162-166) gives the following account of the Maryland version:
The play-party songs given below were used in Garrett Co., Maryland. Members of Protestant churches were not allowed to dance, but there was no bar to their playing swinging games, some of which were not very different from square dances. In the small backwoods community where the writer was reared, we often had no musical instruments, and almost everyone made an effort to sing the songs which we danced or played. All the verses that the writer and those whom she has consulted can recall
are given.
II. COME, MY LITTLE ROVING SAILOR
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Won't you ring around with me?
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Won't you be right and left with me?
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Won't you change partners with me?
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Won't you promenade with me?
Very little variety is provided in this text and it's uncertain if the songs collected by Sharp are the same. The other identifying stanza with generic choruses was collected by Bayard from Levi Hall of Fayette County, Pennsylvania in 1944:
Come My Little Roving Sailor
Come, my little roving sailor,
Come, my little roving bee,
Come, my little roving sailor,
Won't you ring around with me?
Chorus: Granny will your dog bite?
No, child, no, child,
Granny will your dog bite?
No, child, no.
Alternative Chorus: Little Betty Martin,
Tiptoe, tiptoe,
Little Betty Martin,
Tiptoe fine.
Clearly the identifying stanza is the same as the one reported from western Maryland. Andrew Kuntz reports[2]: "The tune is used more for songs than dancing, states Bayard (1981), and in Ireland is joined to the ballad "William Taylor." In Pennsylvania it was a song and play‑party tune, and was used as a dance tune by fiddlers."
The southwestern Pennsylvania tune is Dorian and resembles some of the archaic "Died for Love" tunes. Two of the Sharp versions are sung in minor keys: Cannady's tune is A pentatonic minor while Snowden's is in a hexatonic major key (A major). All of Sharp's tunes are in 3/2 time, have similar contours and seem to be from a similar source. Both the western Maryland tune and the southwestern Pennsylvania tune are reels in common time and seem to be possibly related.
There are several other tunes titled "Roving Sailor" without text which may or may not be related to the identifying stanza. Number 444. "The Roving Sailor" (G major, 4/4, tune only) from Dr. Brown of Mayo was published by Joyce in his "Old Irish Folk Music and Songs, The Forde Collection: Dublin, 1909 p. 250.
Kuntz[ reports[3] a fiddle reel titled "Roving Sailor" that was taken from "the 1938 typewritten manuscript of New Hampshire fiddler John Taggart (1854-1943), entitled “Recollections of a Busy Life” (New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, N.H.). Taggart wrote in his ms. that the tunes “were all taught me during my boyhood days in Sharon (N.H.), by the various fiddlers in that vicinity” [Miller]. Miller points out that Sharon is in “the heart of the Monadnock Region of southwestern New Hampshire, where fiddlers and contra dances abound to this day” (Miller, Fiddler’s Throne, 2004; No. 255, pg. 207).
The possibility exists that these reels are related to Bayard's tune with text however they should be considered different tunes and are listed as so by Kuntz. Only the three Virginia tunes with texts that were collected by Sharp can be considered related to "Madam."
[R. Matteson 2017]
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Footnotes:
1. Sharp A as sung by Mrs I.T. (Lucy) Cannady at Endicott, Virginia on August 22nd. 1918.
2. From The Fiddler's Companion (www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/) A Descriptive Index of North American, British Isles and Irish Music for the Folk Violin and other Instruments by Andrew Kuntz.
3. Ibid. Kuntz reports three different versions titled "Roving Sailor" (Joyce, Bayard and Taggart versions) but does not mention the western Maryland version or the three versions collected by Sharp.