He Beat Her Hard- Neighbors (VA) 1919 Davis L
[My title, replacing the generic title given by Stone to Davis.]
45. THE WIFE WRAPT IN WETHER'S SKIN-- From: Traditional Ballads of Virginia
(Child No. 277)
A dozen texts and two melodies of this ballad have been recovered in Virginia, most of them under the usual American title of "Dandoo," the rest under the Child title, except for one called "Dindo-Dan." As the texts are all short and as they show considerable minor variation, especially in the character and position of the burden, all twelve items, varying in length from three to nine stanzasrare given here. All these variants would seem to belong to a single version, one which does not appear among the regular Child versions, though a somewhat similar text is printed in Child's final Additions and Corrections, V, 304. They belong rather to the usual American "Dandoo" version, variants of which have been printed by Belden, Campbell and
Sharp, Cox, Pound, and others (see below). The Virginia texts follow the B rather than the A version of Miss Pound's American Ballads and Songs, No. 6.
The story told often in fragmentary form by the following texts is the usual one of an unruly wife reformed by a beating, responsibility for which the husband escapes by the technicality of wrapping his wife in a wether's skin and beating the skin. Child has pointed out that the story of the ballad is probably traditionally derived from the old tale of "The Wife Lapped in
Morrel's Skin," Morrel being the husband's old horse fayed to assist at the wife-taming.
For American texts, see Belden, No. 12 (fragment); Brown, p. 9 (North Carolina); Bulletin, Nos. 4, 5, 7-10 Campbell and Sharp, No.33 (Virginia, Kentucky; cf. Sharp, Songs, I, No.6); Child V, 304 (Massachusetts from The Journal of American Folk-Lore VII, 253); Cox, No. 29; Hudson, No. 21 (and Journal, XXXXIX, 209; Mississippi); Journal, VII, 253 (Newell, Massachusetts); XIX, 298 (Belden, Missouri); xxx, 328 (Kittredge, Missouri, fragment); Pound, Ballads, No. 6; Shearin and Combs, p. 8 (fragment). For additional references, see Cox, p. 159; Journal, xxx, 328.
L. ["He Beat Her Hard"] "Wife Wrapt in a Wether's Skin." Collected by Miss Alfreda M. Peel, Sung by Miss Joe Neighbors, of Salem, Va., Roanoke County, August 10, 1919.
1 He beat her hard upon her back,
With two sticks played whickety-whack.
2 "I tell my father and my brothers two
Of this wicked thing You do."
3 "Tell your father and all your kin;
I've only whipped my old wether's skin.