Bow Down- Moore (ME) c.1848 Barry BBM
[My title. From British Ballads from Maine; Barry, Eckstorm, Smyth, 1929. Not given a letter. This was given by the informant after it was read to her and is not so much a version as it is a reference of the age of this ballad. The E version (not included in my collection) goes beyond this-- a Mrs. Morse remembered a Mrs. Stanley singing the ballad but couldn't remember exactly what was sung. After prompting Morse identified some stanzas from Child A.
R. Matteson 2014]
[Bow Down.] Joan B. Moore of Seawall, Mount Desert, when in her eighty-ninth year said she remembered, as a small child living on the Cranberry Islands, that she had heard at school the song of two girls, one of whom drowned the other. And she repeated the lines:
"Sister, take me by the hand,
Bow down,
And you shall have my house and land,
The bow is unto me."