An Acre of Land- Grubb (VA) 1932 Davis AA
[My title. From More Traditional Ballads of Virginia- Davis 1960. Davis made it his mission to find versions of Child 2 since in his first book TBVa- 1929, none were collected. An excerpt of Davis' notes follow:
R. Matteson 2014]
Coffin notes that "in this country, the elf, an interloper in Britain, has been universaily rationalized, to a mortal lover. Frequently, nothing remains but the riddle, sometimes even the love affair being absent." This seems to be the case also with texts recently collected from oral tradition in Britain. The ballad in its modified form has been found in Ireland, Aberdeenshire, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Wilkshire, Sussex, and Somerset, and in this country from Maine to Florida, Texas to California. With its wide popularity, it is curious that the ballad has not been more often found in Virginia. No texts of this ballad appear in TBVa. At present, three versions from three singers have been recovered. All are fragmentary, but all preserve to some extent the love element of the tasks. The refrain lines indicate the usual deviation, from such lines as "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" of Child G. Wimberly suggests, "The plant refrain in The Elfin, Knight (2G), is a very probable survival of an incantation used against the demon suitor." See Wimberly, pp. 345-62, for a "general discussion of name magic, verbal charms, and herbal magic."
The meager recording of this ballad in Virginia- no record in TBVa, and only the three incomplete texts here without tunes are all the more remarkable in view of the twenty texts printed by child and the no less than fifty-five tunes (and texts) printed by Bronson (I, 9-33) .
Bronson divides his musical records into three main groups: Group A, with six variants surviving from Scotland, New England, and Texas; Group B, the sturdiest branch with forty representatives, all having the "True Lover of Mine" refrain; and Group C, with only five variants, wholly English and with the "Acre of Land" and "Ivy" refrain. Since Bronson's classifications are based primarily on musical considerations, it is impossible to relate the three tuneless fragments here to his groups. On the basis of the refrains, however, they would seem to lie closest to his large middle group B. But what Bronson says of his third group, C, is certainly true of all three of the fragments given here: "So far as concerns the words," he says, "this group has pretty completely descended to the nursery: the riddles have lost their dramatic function, and the story is a straight-forward recounting of impossibles, with no challenging from opponents. Here there is little to bolster a theory of evolution from simple to complex." Only CC has the lady reply to the gentleman with a series of tasks actually impossible. The three fragments given below are at least proof that the ballad, apparently more vigorous elsewhere in Britain and in America, especially in New England, is by no means extinct in Virginia.
AA. [An Acre of Land] No local title. Collected by Miss Alfreda M. Peel, of Salem, Va. Sung by Minter Grubb, of Back Creek, Va. Roanoke County. Miss Peel collected this ballad first in 1932, when she sent in six stanzas of two lines, each without chorus. On July 8, 1935, she sent a text as she had re-collected it from Mr. Grubb. This text contained only four stanzas (all of which
were included in the six sent earlier), but after each was an indication of a two-line chorus. Since the later text is better metrically, it is accepted as the basic text here. Stanzas 3 and 4, which were not sent with the later text, are supplied from the earlier one. The chorus is supplied throughout as indicated in the later manuscript. When there is any variation in wording between the earlier and later texts, the whole line as it was sent earlier is given in a footnote.
1 "Go buy to me an acre of land
Between salt water and sea sand,
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
2 "Go plant it all up with one cow's horn, [1]
Plant it all down with one peck of corn, [2]
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
3 "Go cut it down with a goose quill,
Go stack it up in an egg shell,
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine'"
4 "Many a question you have asked me,
and many I'll ask of thee.
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
5 "Go buy to me a cambric shirt,
Go stitch it all 'round without needle or work.[3]
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
6 "Go wash it out in yonder well
Where water never run nor rain never fell, [4]
Let every rose grow merry in time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine."
1. "Go plow it with a cow horn."
2. "Go plant it down with one peck of corn."
3."Go stitch it around without needle or work."
4. "Where rains nor waters never fell."