Fair Ellender- Pope (KY) 1917 Sharp R
[My title, single stanza with music. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians collected by Cecil J. Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell- Volume I; 1932 edition edited by Maud Karpeles. The 1932 edition notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
No. 19. Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 73. Broadside by Catnach. C. S. Burners Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 545. A. Williams's Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, p. 135. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 235; xx. 254; xxviii. 152; xxxix. 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 45 (see also further references).
Texts with tunes:—Kidson's Traditional Tunes, p. 40. English County Songs, p. 42. E. M. Leather's Folk-Lore of Herefordshire, p. 200. Sandys's Christmas Carols, tune 18. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, ii. 105; v. 130. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 94. C. Sharp's English Folk Songs (Selected Edition), ii. 27 (also published in One Hundred English Folk Songs, No.28). Gavin Greig's Last Leaves, No. 28. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 535. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, No. 6. Wyman and Brockway's Twenty Kentucky Songs, p. 14. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii. 128. British Ballads
from Maine, p. 128, Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 191 and 568. McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 28. Sandburg's American Songbag, p. 156.
R. [Fair Ellender] Sung by Mrs. MINNIE POPE at Clear Creek, Wasioto, Bell Co., Ky., May 1, 1917
Pentatonic. Mode 2.
Come riddle us all, our dear, goodmother,
Come riddle us all as one,
Whether I shall marry fair Ellender,
Or bring the brown girl home?
The brown girl she has houses and lands,
Fair Ellender she has none;
So my advice for you would be,
To bring the brown girl home.