Black Jack Davy- Hogan (MO) 1909 Belden B
[From Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouni Folk-Song Society, Belden's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
The Gypsy Laddie
(Child 200)
Of the twelve versions of this ballad recognized by Child (five Scotch and two from the north of England, one Irish, one from Shropshire, one from gypsies, one from Massachusetts, and one from New York) the northern broadside, G, is apparently the source of or at least the nearest akin to the American texts. It was also printed by Catnach, and had sufficient popularity in this country to be burlesqued in Dewitt's Forget-Me-Not Songster (New York, 1972, p. 223). Child gives no analogs from other languages ; but since Child's work was completed Olrik, in his continuation of Grundtvig's work, has published (DgF No. 369) a Scandinavian ballad in which a proud girl who has refused princes and noblemen is fooled into marrying a roaming 'skinner,' the Danish equivalent of gypsy or tinker, and ends as a tinker's trull. The jingling refrain commonly found in American versions (as in Miss Laws's text, below) I have not found in British texts. The compelling charm of gypsy music (regarding which see JEFDSS II 83-91) is fairly well retained in America, north and south, as are also the shoes (or boots) of Spanish leather; the latter derive from the English broadside. But what has apparently most pleased American singers is the contrast between domesticity, security, and luxury on the one hand and the homeless poverty of the wandering gypsies on the other. Few texts miss the comparison between the warm feather bed and the cold, cold ground.
Texts have been recorded from tradition since Child's time in Aberdeenshire (LL 126-9; also in Ord), Oxfordshire (FSUT 122), Berkshire (FSUT 120), and Somerset (FSSom 18); and on this side of the water in Newfoundland (FSN 13-6, BSSN 38-9), Nova Scotia (JAFL XVIII 191), Maine (BBM 269-77), Vermont (GGMS 7B-9, VFSB 220-1), Massachusetts (JAFL XVIII 191-3, XXX 324-5), Rhode Island (JAFL XVIII 194), Nantucket (by way of New Jersey, JAFL XVIII 193), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXIV 846), Virginia (TBV 423-31, SharpK I 294-9, SCSM 219-21), West Virginia (FSS 180-6), Kentucky (FSKM 14-7, SharpK I 237-9), Tennessee (ETWVMB 59-60, sharpK I 233-4,236, FSSH 110-2), North Carolina (SharpK I 234-6, 237, 219, FSSH 112, BMFSB 6-7, TBSSG 4-5, SCSM 216-9), South Carolina (SCSM 221-3), Mississippi (FSM 117-9), Ohio (JAFL: XXV 174-5), Illinois (JAFL XLVIII 385-6, TSSI 140-1, SCSM 223-4), Iowa (MAFLS XXIX 11), and Missouri. It is given without precise location in FSSM 4-5.
B. 'Black Jack Davy.' Written out for Miss Hamilton by David Hogan, one of her pupils in West Plains, in 1909. He got it 'from an old lady.' Printed JAFL XXV 174. It is not always clear to whom the speeches are to be assigned.
'Come go with me, my pretty little pink,
Come go with me, my honey,
Come go with me to a distant land
Where we never will need for money,
'Where we never will need for money.
'The river slow, the heather bright,
The sky is low and hazy;
But ere the morning dawns again
You'll be gone with the Black Jack Davy,
You'll be gone with the Black Jack Davy.'
'Go bring me out my high-heel shoes
That's made of Spanish leather,
And I will wear them out today
For flowers at the distant heather,
For flowers at the distant heather.'
'Go bring me out my milk-white horse
'Which rides so light and steady;
I'll ride all day and I'll ride all night
Till I overtake my lady.'