The Dewy Dells of Yarrow- Richards (NH) 1941 Flanders
[From Flanders, Ancient Ballads III, 1963. Flanders notes follow. Music (upcoming) is transcribed for the second stanza.
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
The Braes of Yarrow
(Child 214)
Scholarship on Child 214, "The Braes of yarrow," and on 215, "Rare Willie Drowned in Yarrow" has suffered much confusion in America. In 1950, T. P. Coffin, in an article in JAF, LXIII, 328-335, attempted to clarify the situation. His findings amount to this (see Coffin, 129-132 for a more detailed summary): The Child A-L series in which a girl's lover is slain by her cruel brother and eight other members of the family for stealing is not found in this country, although collectors have claimed it. what has been found are two fragments of Child 215, "Rare Willie" [see Phillips Barry, British Ballads from Maine, 292, Text B, and Mary
O. Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio (New York, 1939), 69]; a version of William Hamilton's poem that Child cited as influencing his J, K, and L texts [see Child, IV, 163; Allan Ramsey's Tea-Table Miscellany (London 1733), 242; and J. Harrington Cox, Folk Songs of the South (Cambridge, Mass., 1925), 137]; and a few New York and New England versions of the Child Q-S, "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow" ballad in which ten men battle over a girl and in which a dream-reader in the girls family predicts her true love's death. However, since 1950, Norman Cazden has suggested in a NYFQ, Winter, 1952, 242-266 article that
Child's 215, "Rare Willie," is really two ballads, one dealing with a drowning at Gamrie and one with a drowning at Yarrow. Furthermore, he feels the Yarrow versions belong rightfully to the tradition of 214. And, in 1958, Mary Celeste Parler printed two southwestern texts of "The Braes of Yarrow." one of these is quite like the usual New York, New England Child Q-S tradition. The other, however, is a cowboy version that appears to have derived from Child L.
The Flanders texts add even more confusion to this already troublesome tradition. Flanders A, while like the Child Q-S series, also shows certain similarities to the child A-I series. The third and fourth stanzas of Flanders A include questions and answers not unlike those in Child A, B, and I, while the murder of the lover by the arrow shot from behind the tree is similar to Child D, stanza 7. Flanders B, moreover, includes a stanza, the third, which is not in child's texts of 214 but is found in somewhat similar form in Child 215, D-H. The answer to all this can only lie in the fact that "The Braes of Yarrow" as sung in Child A-L.
"The Braes of Yarrow" as sung in Child Q-S, and "Rare Willie Drowned in Yarrow" have become as mixed in oral tradition as they have in the minds of American scholars.
The song includes much superstition from early times: the dream-reader, the blood revenge, the girls drinking the blood of her slain lover, the use of the girl's hair. The original form of the ballad may be quite old, and in this connection it is worth noting that there is a Scandinavian analogue [see MacEdward Leach, The Ballad, Booh (New York, 1955), 570, for a text]. Beyond the references given in Coffin, 129-132 (American), see Dean-Smith, 64 (English); Greig and Keith, 141-144 and Ord , 426 (Scottish). Child, IV, 160 f. discusses possible origins of the story, and Cazden, in addition to taking issue with Child in the NYFQ article cited above, has used the song as a vehicle for remarks on the social significance of balladry in JAF, LXVIII, 201-209.
The two tunes for Child 214 seem to be unrelated. The Richards tune is related to various tunes associated with Child 84.
The Dewy Dells of Yarrow- Sung by Mrs. Belle Richards of Colebrook, NH, November 20, 1941; Flanders w/music
O brother dear, I dreamed a dream
And I fear it will prove sorrow,
I dreamed I was picking the edry bells,
In the dewy dells of Yarrow.
O sister dear, I can read your dream
In . . . grief and sorrow,
For your true love John lies dead and gone,
In the dewy dells of Yarrow.
She wrung her hands and tore her hair
In mortal grief and sorrow
She tore a blue ribbon from off her hair
That she had received in Yarrow
Then up the hill and down the dale
And through the stream so narrow
It was there she found her true love John
Lying dead and gone in Yarrow.
Her hair it was three quarters long
The color it was yellow
She tied it round his waist so small
And she brought him home from Yarrow.
"Oh daughter dear," her father cried
"Why mourn in grief and sorrow?
I can wed you to a much nobler man
Than the one you've lost in Yarrow."
"O father dear, you have seven sons
You can wed them all tomorrow
But the fairest flower that blooms in June
Is the one I lost in Yarrow."