Gypsy Davy- Laws (IN-MO) 1869 Belden C1
[From Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Song Society, 1940 included in version C with another version by Lucy Laws, 'The Gyptian Laddie' that was published in JAF in 1912. Belden's notes follow.
The first ballad by her given in 1940 (this version, see below) is based on (Archie) Hughes' minstrel version which first appeared in the 1863 collection of songs, Hooley's Opera House Songster. It was reprinted by De Witt's Forget-Me-Not Songster in 1872 and in Wehman's Universal Songster Volume 7 in the 1880s.
The second ballad, 'The Gyptian Laddie' is not give correctly or in full in 1940. I will make a separate version for Lucy Laws second version, C2. The notes are unclear which version Lucy Laws is referring and it's possible there is another version she also knew.
R. Matteson 2015]
The Gypsy Laddie
(Child 200)
Of the twelve versions of this ballad recognized by Child (five Scotch and two from the north of England, one Irish, one from Shropshire, one from gypsies, one from Massachusetts, and one from New York) the northern broadside, G, is apparently the source of or at least the nearest akin to the American texts. It was also printed by Catnach, and had sufficient popularity in this country to be burlesqued in Dewitt's Forget-Me-Not Songster (New York, 1972, p. 223). Child gives no analogs from other languages ; but since Child's work was completed Olrik, in his continuation of Grundtvig's work, has published (DgF No. 369) a Scandinavian ballad in which a proud girl who has refused princes and noblemen is fooled into marrying a roaming 'skinner,' the Danish equivalent of gypsy or tinker, and ends as a tinker's trull. The jingling refrain commonly found in American versions (as in Miss Laws's text, below) I have not found in British texts. The compelling charm of gypsy music (regarding which see
JEFDSS II 83-91) is fairly well retained in America, north and south, as are also the shoes (or boots) of Spanish leather; the latter derive from the English broadside. But what has apparently most pleased American singers is the contrast between domesticity, security, and luxury on the one hand and the homeless poverty of the wandering gypsies on the other. Few texts miss the comparison between the warm feather bed and the cold, cold ground. Texts have been recorded from tradition since Child's time in Aberdeenshire (LL 126-9; also in Ord), Oxfordshire (FSUT 122), Berkshire (FSUT 120), and Somerset (FSSom 18); and on this side of the water in Newfoundland (FSN 13-6, BSSN 38-9), Nova Scotia (JAFL XVIII 191), Maine (BBM 269-77), Vermont (GGMS 7B-9, VFSB 220-1), Massachusetts (JAFL XVIII 191-3, XXX 324-5), Rhode Island (JAFL XVIII 194), Nantucket (by way of New Jersey, JAFL XVIII 193), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXIV 846), Virginia (TBV 423-31, SharpK I 294-9, SCSM 219-21), West Virginia (FSS 180-6), Kentucky (FSKM 14-7, SharpK I 237-9), Tennessee (ETWVMB 59-60, sharpK I 233-4,236, FSSH 110-2), North Carolina (SharpK I 234-6, 237, 219, FSSH 112, BMFSB 6-7, TBSSG 4-5, SCSM 216-9), South Carolina (SCSM 221-3), Mississippi (FSM 117-9), Ohio (JAFL: XXV 174-5), Illinois (JAFL XLVIII 385-6, TSSI 140-1, SCSM 223-4), Iowa (MAFLS XXIX 11), and Missouri. It is given without precise location in FSSM 4-5.
C1. 'Gypsy-Davy.' Contributed by Miss Lucy Laws of Christian College, Columbia, in 1911[1]. Miss Laws adds: 'I heard portions of this ballad in Columbus, Indiana, in 1869. The tune was entirely different and the ballad altogether suggestive of conscious coarseness.
'Once there was a high-born lord,
He courted a high-born lady;
He met with a false (or fault), a false so gay
Along of Gypsy Davy - O.
Chorus: Hoops now's all the go,
Sets the darkies crazy;
This is the way we all shall go
Along o' Gypsy Davy (sometimes Davy - O)
Last night she slept in a warm feather-bed
And in her arms her baby;
Tonight she sleeps the devil knows where
In the arms of Gypsy Davy.
'. . . probably I caught the words from children in the public school or on the street.' Apparently from the Forget-Me-Not Songster burlesque, of which the chorus runs:
Elopements now are all the go,
They set the ladies crazy;
Now then, ladies all, beware,
And look out for Gypsy Davy,
1. I assume this date is the same for both ballads