Captain, Captain, Tell me True- Miller (NC) c.1864 Brown B
[From Brown Collection of NC Folklore Volume 2, Ballads, 1952. Their (Belden and all) notes follow. Thomas Smith has proven to be an unreliable source and ballads communicated by him are questionable.
A second fragment is included below also from Thomas Smith and also quite old.
R. Matteson 2017]
Brown Collection Notes:
104 The Sailor Boy
This song was printed by Catnach and Such and probably by other ballad printers in England in the last century and is widely known and sung. See BSM 186, and add to the references there given Maine (MWS 56-9), Virginia (FSV 108-11, 118), North Carolina (BMFSB 24-5, SFLQ v 146), Arkansas (OFS I 300), Missouri (OFS I 296-300), Ohio (BSO 97-103), Indiana (BSI 269-70), Illinois (JAFL XL 235-6), and Michigan (BSSM 94, blended with 'The Butcher Boy'). Barry listed it among the ballads in his collection from the North Atlantic States but did not print it. Like other items of the folk song of unhappy love its content is likely to vary; with its central images of the girl bidding her father build her a boat and later demanding of the sailors she meets news of her sailor boy may be combined motives from 'The Butcher Boy,' 'Little Sparrow,' 'The Lass of Roch Royal,' or an elaborate preliminary story may be provided as in version L below.
B. 'Captain, Captain, Tell me True.' A fragment of only two stanzas reported by Thomas Smith as sung to him by E. B. Miller of Boone, Watauga county, in May 1915. "Mr. Miller heard this song sung during the Civil War by a Mrs. Parsons of Wilkes county."
1 'Captain, captain, tell me true,
Did my sweet William sail with you?
Answer me quick to give me joy,
There's nary one I'll love but my sweet soldier boy.'
2 'No, kind lady, he is not here,
He was killed in the battle, my dear.'
'Every ship that I pass by
There I'll inquire for my sweet soldier boy.'
Mrs. Polly Rayfield of Zionville, who had heard the song sung during the Civil War, gave the following lines as belonging to it:
As I rode upon the main,
I saw three ships a-comin' from Spain.