Fair Ellen- Gordon (NC) c.1920s Brown Collection
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore; Vol. 2 Ballads; 1952. The collector of this fine version was Maude Minish Sutton of Caldwell County, N.C., a teacher, writer, and folklorist. She taught in Chapel Hill, China Grove, Avery County, and Lenoir, N.C. Sutton was also a contributor to North Carolina newspapers and on the staff of the Lenoir News-Topic. She married Dennis Howard Sutton.
No date was given but by looking at the dates of dates of her contributions to the Brown Collection, it was collected in the 1920's or early 1930s. A second version from a different informant was collected but not submitted because the text was "evidently rather salacious."
R. Matteson 2014]
Child Waters
(Child 63)
This ballad must have been popular — as it deserved to be — in Scotland a hundred and fifty years ago. Of Child's ten versions all but one (A, from the Percy Folio MS) are Scotch and come from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. But it has seldom been recorded in later times. Greig reports it from Aberdeenshire (LL 51-2) ; there is no mention of it in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society. Randolph (OFS i 69-70) reports a fragmentary text of three stanzas from Arkansas. Otherwise it had not been found in America until Mrs. Sutton found the North Carolina text here presented. This text belongs in the same tradition as Child's B, which is from Mrs. Brown of Falkland; indeed, the correspondence is fairly close, though the North Carolina version omits some details and modifies others.
'Fair Ellen.' Reported by Mrs. Sutton from the singing of Mrs. Rebecca Gordon of Cat's Head on Saluda Mountain, Henderson county.
1 'I warn you all, you maidens fair,
That wear the red and brown.
That you don't leave your father's house
To run with boys from town.
2 'For here am I, a maiden fair
That once wore red and brown,
And I did leave my father's house
And f oiler a man from town.'
3 He sprang upon his milk-white steed
And fast away rode he;
She dressed herself like a little foot-page
And ran beside his knee
4 Till they came to a deep river;
It ran both swift and wide.
'Oh, can you swim,' her lover said.
'Or hang to the horse's side?'
5 The first step in the water deep.
It came up to her knee.
'Alas, alas,' the lady said,
'I fear you've drownded me.
6 'Lie still, lie still, my baby dear,
Don't work your mother woe;
Your father rides on a milk-white steed
And cares not for us two.'
7. When they reached the side of the deep river
She mounted on a stone.
He turned about his milk-white steed
And took her on behind.
8 'Oh, do you see that castle so high
That shines so bright and free?
There is a lady in that high castle
That will part you and me.'
9 'If there is a lady in that castle
That will part you and I,
The day I see her,' Ellen said,
'That day I surely die.'
10 'Oh, she shall eat the good wheat bread
And you shall eat the corn.
And you will set and curse the hour
That ever you were born.'
11 Four and twenty gay ladies
Welcomed him to the castle green,
But the fairest lady of them all
At the manger stood alone.
12 When bells were rung and the table spread
And the guests sat down to eat,
Fair Ellen at the last table
With the servants ate her meat.
13 Then out and spoke his mother dear,
And a wise woman was she:
'Where did you come up with that fair foot-page
That looks so sad at thee?
14 'Sometimes his cheek shines rosy red,
Sometimes it's pale and thin.
He looks like a woman faint with love
And caught in deadly sin.'
15 'It makes me laugh, my mother dear.
To hear such words from thee.
He is a lord's own younger son
Who for love has followed me.
16 'Rise up, rise up, my little foot-page.
And give my horse his hay.'
'Oh, that I will, my master dear.
As fast as ever I may.'
17 She took the hay in her soft white hands
And ran from out the hall.
And fast she went to the great stable
And she did
18 His mother sat within her bower
And pondered all alone,
When in the silence of the night
She heard fair Ellen moan.
19 'Get up, get up, my son,' she said,
'Go see how she does fare.
For I do hear a woman mourn,
And a babe a-crying, too.'
20 Oh, hastily he got him up,
Into the barn went he.
'Be not afraid, fair Ellen,' he said,
'There's no one here but me.'
21 Up he picked his fair young son
And gave to him some milk.
And up he took fair Ellen then
And dressed her in the silk.
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17. Child Waters
(Child 63)
Mrs. Sutton evidently contributed two versions of this song. There is, however, no recording of the version reported in II 65 "from the singing of Mrs. Rebecca Gordon." The other version, evidently rather salacious, Mrs. Sutton collected from an old woman who lived once near the falls of Gregg's Prong of Wilson's Crest, but felt it was unsuitable for publication. It is unfortunate that we have no tune available for either version.