Hangsman- Bradley (VA) 1918 Sharp MS
[My title. Single verse with music, from Sharp's MSS. 4388/?; Vaughan Williams Memorial Library also Bronson No. 14.
Sharp's diary entry is below.
R. Matteson 2015]
Sharp diary 1918 page 164. Monday 10 June 1918 - Blue Ridge Springs
Breakfast at 6.30 & train to Dewey and thence to Mrs Donald, for the last time. We got several more from her but she is a vague inconsequent person and it is hard work pumping her — but worth the trouble. Then to Mrs Bowyer from whom we extracted several more including quite a wonderful tune to the "Little Merchant’s Daughter" and a nice variant of "Geordie". Then we called on Mrs Long who was "sick" and couldn’t sing so we tramped back 3 or 4 miles home along a dusty road in an intense heat arriving in a state of sweat & collapse — Maud worse than I on this occasion. After lunch, a rest and tea wrote out my tunes. I find I have taken down between 70 & 80 in this last week — a record. In the evening walked round to Bob Bradley’s, got some more songs from him and sang several ourselves. His son played the banjo and a man did a very spirited hoe-down after which Maud danced Lumps of Plum Pudding & None so Pretty to my singing accompaniment, much to everyone’s delight! Home to bed pretty tired.
[Hangsman] The Maid Freed from the Gallows- sung by Bob Bradley, Blue Ridge, Va., June 10, 1918.
"The repetition at (c) was only sung at the end of the second and third verse of each triplet"' [Sharp's MS note.]
Hangsman, hangsman, slack your rope,
slack it for a while;
I think I see my father a-coming,
He's rode a many long mile, mile,
He's rode a many long mile,