Down By The Greenwood Side- Ramsay (NY) 1939
[From Body, Boots, & Britches by Harold William Thompson - 1939. From the singing of Mrs. Frances Ramsay. The date should be considerably older.
Thompson's notes follow:
R. Matteson 2014]
In the late middle ages the penknife seems to have been as formidable a weapon as a Harlem razor, particularly useful in cases of "malice domestic."
From Mrs. Frances Ramsay of Lake George, who has enriched my collection with many a letter, comes a version of The Cruel Mother (Child, 20), known to her as Down by the Greenwood Side. She says: "The older girls of the neighboring families and their mothers sometimes sang it. We small fry were not supposed to hear it. We sometimes overheard, but did not put cotton into our ears." By overhearing she has preserved in a York State tradition one of the oldest British ballads:
There was a lady, she lived in york,
All along the lonely-ay.
She fell in love with her father's clerk,
Down by the greenwood side-ee.
While walking through her father's corn,
All along the lonely-ay,
She had two pretty babies born,
Down by the greenwood side-ee.
She had nothing to wrap them in,
Only one poor apron thin.
She had a penknife long and sharp;
With that she pierced their tender hearts.
She flung them into the raging foam,
Saying, "Take your turn in the fair maid's home."
While walking near her father's hall
She saw two pretty boys playing ball.
"O dear children, if you were mine,
I would dress you in silk so fine."
"O dear mother, we were thine;
You did not dress us in silk so fine."
"You had a penknife long and sharp;
With that you pierced our tender heart.
"You flung us into the raging foam,
Saying, 'Take your turn in the fair maid's home.' "
"O dear children, can you tell
If my poor soul's for heaven or hell?"
"Seven years a hawk in the wood,
Seven years a fish in the flood,
"Seven years attending the bell,
Seven years a keeper in hell!"
"[I'd] like very well to be hawk in the wood,
Like very well to be fish in the flood,
"Like very well to be tending the bell,
But God keep my soul from being keeper in hell!"