Hangman Song- Duncan (NC) 1922 Brown G
[My title. From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, II, 1952 and Volume IV, music. Listed as 30. The Maid Freed from the Gallows (Child 95).
Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
For preceding records of this ballad and its relation to theories of communal origin, see BSM 66, adding to the references there given New Hampshire (NGMS 117-18), Kentucky (BTFLS in 95), Tennessee (SFLQ XI 129-30), North Carolina (FSRA 35-6), Florida (FSF 295-9), Arkansas (OFS I 146-8), Missouri (OFS I 143-4, 145), Ohio (BSO 62-4), Indiana (BSI 125-7), and Michigan (BSSM 146-8 — this last being the "golden ball" form, rare in this country). In only half of the North Carolina texts is it a woman that waits to be freed from the gallows ; in versions B C E K L it is a man, and in D the sex is indeterminate. D is the only one of our texts in which the song has been turned into a play.
G. 'Hangman Song.' Sent in in September 1922 by Miss Cora Lee Wyatt, as sung by John Duncan of Spruce Pine, Mitchell county. The series is father, mother, brother, sister, true lover; the gallows is "yonder lonesome tree"; and it ends:
'My sweetheart, dear sweetheart, I've brought you gold,
And I've brought you free;
For I've not come to see you hang
On yonder lonesome tree.'