Devil's Nine Questions- Drain (OK) pre1964 Moores
[From Ballads and Folk Songs of the Southwest. this version is probably from the 1920s but the Moores failed to give vital info to guess at the date, the book was published in 1964 but most of the versions are much older. The Moores notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
1 Riddles Wisely Expounded
Riddles Wisely Expounded (Child, No. 1) is the most sought-for ballad in this collection for it is very likely the oldest ballad in the English language. The questions in the Oklahoma text may be a part of Captain Wedderburn's Courtship (Child, No. 46), but the strongest similarity seems to be with text D of Riddles Wisely Expounded, which Child took from Motherwell (see Child, I,5). Jamieson, II, 155-58, gives a text which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford "in a large volume of ballads in black letters, of the latter part of Charles the Second's reign" (see Jamieson, II, 15a). An excellent text recorded in Virginia may be found in Davis, 59-60, 549. B. A. Botkin, in his Treasury of Southern Folklore, 717-18, includes a text from Alan Lomax, Anglo-
American Ballads, Record No.4-A-1, Archives of American Folk Songs, Library of Congress. This variant was recorded by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax through the courtesy of Alfreda M. Peel, who also contributed the text in the Davis collection. For a fragment from Louisiana, see Journal, Vol. XII, 129 (Cooke).
The Devil's Nine Questions was recited by Mrs. Ota Jones of Tahlequah, who came to Oklahoma from Arkansas in 1920 at age seventeen. She learned this song from Pete Drain, who lived at Hulbert, Oklahoma. Following is a part of Mrs. Jones conversation with us. "Law, law! If you want to get hold of someone who can sing, just hunt up Pete Drain. His Devil's Nine Questions has a pretty tune." When pressed for the second and third lines of each stanza, she remarked, "They don't have
any sense to 'em. I've always wanted Pete to make a ballet of it for me, but we were always in a crowd when I would hear him sing it." Pete Drain, like the song he sings, is one of those things toward which our hearts are inclined. Vance Randolph, in Ozark Folksongs, has recorded material from singers whose names are Drain and one speculates that Pete might come from the same family.
"If you will answer these questions for me,
This very day I'll marry with thee."
"What is whiter than milk,
What is softer than silk?"
"Snow is whiter than milk,
Down is softer than silk."
"What is louder than a horn,
What is sharper than a thorn?"
"Thunder is louder than a horn,
Death is sharper than a thorn."
"You have answered these questions for me,
This very day I'll marry with thee."