Gipsy Davy- Patch (ME) 1928 Barry G1
[From British Ballads from Maine; Barry Eckstorm and Smyth, 1929. Barry's notes follow. Barry already published A-G in JAFL 1905 so the letter designations for BBM are A1, B1 etc.
R. Matteson 2015]
GIPSY DAVY
(Child 200)
The texts A-D are evidently from the same stock, tracing to Child J. It is fair to reckon Child J b as a Maine text, since it was taken down about 1840 from the singing of a lady whose mother, Mrs. Farmer, was born in Maine. Professor Kittredge, in JAFL, XXX, 321, prints a Rochester, Mass., text, "a variant of Child's version J," with the air. This air, together with a Cambridge, Mass., air (P.B., in JAFL, XVIIII, 195), a Providence, R. I., aft (ibid, p. 194), Mrs. Young's air, and Dr. Patch's air, has descended traditionally from a common original.
But Mrs. Robbins's E-text is utterly unlike the others and is apparently Irish. The Williams Collection of Irish Broadsides, in the Public Library of Providence, R. I., contains the original of it, purchased some sixty years ago in Ireland. But so far from scouting Mrs. Robbins's text as being recent or doubtfully traditional, we do not question its having been sung on Mount Desert Island for almost a full century and perhaps for a much longer time. For it happens that there is about Mount Desert a stratum of early Irish settlement. Not to mention the terrible wreck of the ship Grand Design, in 1740, upon the ledges near the Western Way, when what were left of the Irish emigrants it was bearing to the New World settled along the Maine coast, there were a
number of stalwart young Irishmen who came at a later period, married wives of the native stock and became the heads of well-known families, still resident. Such are the Longs, the Bulgers, and the Carrolls. And still later came William Lawler, from Waterford, a good singer, whose songs are still remembered as his own. The Irish songs on the Maine coast were in most cases brought over directly by bold sailors, sturdy fishermen, or good craftsmen who came as settlers at an early period, married Yankee girls, and identified themselves with the native English stock, as the laborers and forced emigrants of the Famine period never have done. The latter class had the comic "Paddy" songs of the middle of the last century; but the old balladry of Ireland, which we find abundantly along the Maine coast, came here very much earlier. To show how near Mrs. Robbins's song is to the Irish broadside mentioned, we quote the latter, which we have never found in any American imprint, for comparison.
G. [Gipsy Davy] Sent in, November 17, 1928, by Dr. Edith M. Patch of the University of Maine, Orono, as recollected from her mother's singing. Recorded by Dr. Ava M. Chadbourne and Miss G. Merrill, University of Maine, Orono.
1 [The gipsy- came from o,er the hills
They called (him) the] gipsy Davy,
Sitting beneath a greenwood tree
And charming the heart of a lady.
REFRAIN
Twadle-la-de dinktum dinktum dinktum!
Twadle-la-de dinktum Davy!
Sitting beneath a greenwood tree
And charming the heart of a lady.
2 "Will you forsake your hearth and hame,
Will you forsake Your baby,
Will you forsake your ain true love
To roam with the gipsy Davy?
3 "Yes, I'll forsake my hearth and hame,
And I'll forsake my baby,
And I'll forsake my ain true love.
To roam with gipsy Davy.
4 My laird came hame very late one night,
Enqujring for his lady.
"My lady's gone," the servant said,
"To roam with a gipsy Davy."
5 "Then bring to me my old bay mare,
The grey is not so speedy;
I'll ride all night, and I'll ride all day,
But I'll overtake my lady."
The foregoing text is nearest to child J. An unusual feature of it is the retention of the Scotch dialect, which may be indicative
of greater age than any of the numerous American texts derived from the J-source, and would point to a Scottish origin for the J-group as a whole.