A Jewess- Creech (KY) 1917 Sharp J
[My title. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, I, 1934 edition; collected by Cecil J. Sharp, edited Karpeles. Comprising two hundred and seventy-four Songs and Ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight Tunes; Including thirty-nine Tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Karpeles and Sharps notes follow.
Additional verses are from Sharp's MS, only the first and last verses appear in EFSSA.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes; No. 31. Sir Hugh.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 155. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 539. Baring-Gould's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, pp. 92 and 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 120 (see also further references). Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 293 ; xxix. 164; xxxix. 108.
Texts with tunes :—M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes, p. 46. English County Songs, p. 86. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 264. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 46. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, xvii, tune No. 7. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 582. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 68 (published also in English Folk-Songs, Selected Edition, i. 22, and One Hundred English Folk- Songs, p. 22). Newell's Games and Songs of American Children, p. 76. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 148. D. Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. 53-5. Musical Quarterly, January 1916, p. 15. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxxv. 344; xxxix, 213. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 400 and 587.
J. [A Jewess]- Sung by MRS. BERRY CREECH at Pine Mountain, Harlan Co., Ky., Aug. 29, 1917. Pentatonic. Mode 3 (no 6th).
1. Down come a Jewess
With some apples in her hand,
Saying: Come here, my little son Hugh
And you shall have one them, them, them,
And you shall have one them.
2. I can't come there
Nor I won't come there at all,
If my mother was to knew I was here, [sim.]
My red blood she'd make fall.
3. She picked him up all in her arms,
And carried him to her hall,
She set him down in a big arm-chair
And scratched him with a pin, pin, pin,
And scratched him with a pin.
4. In her hands she held a little basin
To catch his heart's blood in.
5. She carried him down to yonders well
Where it's both cold, winding deep,
"Lie there, my little son Hugh,
I hope you will never swim."
6. When the sun went down all the children went home,
Every mother had a little son,
But little Hugh's mother had none.
7. She picked up her little birch-rod
And after him did go,
Saying: If I meet him on the road,
I'll whip him home.
8. She went down to yonders gate,
Whiles the Jews were all alseep
She went down to yonders well,
Where it's both cold, winding deep.
9 Saying If you're in here, my little son Hugh,
Answer when I call.
. . . .
. . . .
10. Here I am in this cold place,
Where it is both cold, winding deep.
My soul is high up in Heaven above,
While hers is low down in hell.