House Carpenter- Crane (TN) 1916 Sharp K; Bronson 109a
[Single stanza with music from: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; collected by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, published 1917 (notes follow). Sharp's No. 29. is titled, The Daemon Lover. I've changed it to the more appropriate title- House Carpenter.
Sharp did not provide the complete text for Crane's version and many of the versions he collected because he probably felt that the text was not significantly different than the other versions he had already written out. Additional text from Karpeles in 1950 when she revisited the Appalachians.
Following Sharps notes is an excerpt by Mike Yeats.
R. Matteson 2013]
Notes: No. 29. The Daemon Lover.
Texts without tunes:—Child, No. 243.
Texts with tunes:—Journal of the Folk-Song Society, iii., 84. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix xv., tune 1. Songs of the West, 2nd ed., No. 76. American variants: —Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii., 207; xix., 295; xx., 257; xxvi., 360; xxv., 274 (with tune). Broadside by H. De Marsan, New York. Musical Quarterly, January, 1916, p. 18.In 1950 Maud Karpeles and Sidnet Cowell revisited the Appalachian singers who Sharp (and Karpeles) collected from in Sharp's earlier 1916-1918 trips. Crane's text is below, supplied from the 1950 trip. In 1932 only a single stanza was published.
Excerpts from: "Come in, come in …" Jeff Stockton and the Flag Pond singers
by Michael Yates
On Monday 4th September, 1916, Cecil Sharp and his assistant Maud Karpeles were in the small settlement of Flag Pond in Unicoi County, Tennessee, and that was the day when they 'went off early in search of Jeff Stockton on Hogskin Creek.
We don't know exactly why Sharp and Karpeles went to Flag Pond. They were, of course, in the Mountains in search of folksongs and they had spent the previous weeks to the south-west of Flag Pond, working in Madison County, NC. I suspect that they chose to be driven a goodly distance to Flag Pond because they had been told of singers there by their Madison County informants. I say this because if we look at census and other records for Flag Pond at that time, we find many families living in Flag Pond who shared surnames with the Madison County singers, Hensley, Norton, Rice and Shelton, for example. Indeed, when Sharp and Karpeles had arrived in Flag Pond on 31st August, 1916, they 'called on Mr Alfred H Norton … from whom I got a few songs'. Later that day they also visited a Mrs Shelton in search of songs, though 'she couldn't sing anything'. Reading these notes in Sharp's diary, it is, I think, clear that he was already aware of these people before he arrived in Flag Pond.
* * * * *
Returning from Higgin's Creek on 1st September, 1916, Sharp and Karpeles called on other singers, such as twenty-one year old Mrs Addy Crane, Sylvaney Ramsey and Mr & Mrs James Gabriel Coates. As I have already written about Mr & Mrs Coates elsewhere[5] I will simply say that they were the people who gave Sharp a version of The False Knight Upon the Road much to Sharp's delight.[6] Sylvaney Ramsey, from Higgin's Creek, provided a tune for the song The True Lover's Farewell and a fuller version of The Daemon Lover. Mrs Addy Crane also gave Sharp a tune for The Daemon Lover as well as tunes for Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor, Goodbye Sweet Jane, Brisk Young Lover and Awake, Awake. She was also able to give complete versions of The Lily of the West, The Shooting of His Dear, The Rejected Lover and what seems to be a song that was unique to her, called The Discontented Husband.
On Saturday, 2nd September Sharp and Karpeles again called on Mr & Mrs Coates during the morning. It rained for most of the time. After lunch they tried to find Mrs Crane's husband, Hezekiah, a possible singer, but he was away from home. The pair visited nearby Rocky Fork, where Mary Norton gave them a version of The Gipsy Laddie, before returning to some of the other Nortons who gave them a couple of the songs mentioned above. It had not been a particularly successful day. They had been soaked, had only collected a few songs and, in the evening's mail, discovered that the composer George Butterworth had been killed at the Somme. Butterworth's death affected Sharp badly, 'I feel too sad to set to work to do anything'. We don't know how Maud Karpeles felt, although later she said that Butterworth had been 'one of the objects of her romantic yearnings'.[7]
On Sunday, 3rd September, Sharp had a lie-in, not having breakfast until 'half-an-hour later', at 7am! He spent the morning copying out song tunes before walking over to the Crane household. Sharp spells the surname as 'Crane', although most families in the area use the spelling 'Crain'. It would seem that Sharp had been told that Hezekiah sang a song which, so Sharp believed, was a version of the ballad The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin. Hezekiah was in when they called, but the song turned out to be 'a very moderate version of My Boy Billy!' But all was not lost, as Hezekiah also gave Sharp versions of three other songs, William Hall, The Brisk Young Lover and Awake, Awake.
5. The Greatest Prize Musical Traditions article No.154.
6. Eliza Coate's version of The False Knight Upon the Road is printed in Yates, Bradtke & Taylor Dear Companion. Appalachian Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection EFDSS, London. 2004. pp.45 - 46.
7. See Simona Packenham Singing and Dancing Wherever She Goes. A Life of Maud Karpeles EFDSS, London. 2011. pp.83- 84. Packenham is incorrect in saying that Sharp & Karpeles received the news of Butterworth's death on the same day that they collected songs from Jeff Stockton.
K. House Carpenter- Sung by Mrs. ADDY CRANE at Flag Pond, Tenn., Aug. 31, 1916-
Heptatonic. Mode 1, a + b (ionian).
O are you weeping for my gold,
Or is it for my store,
Or is it for your house-carpenter
Whose face you shall see no more?
House Carpenter- Crane, 1950 text- Karpeles
1. Well met, well met, my old true love,
Well met, well met, says she.
I have just married a house carpenter,
A nice young man is he.
2. If you'll forsake your house carpenter
And go along with me,
I'll take you where the grass grows green,
On the banks of Tennessee.
3. She pickcd up her tender little babe,
And gave it kisses three,
Stay here, stay here, my tender little babe,
While I go sail the sea.
4. They hadn't been gone but about two weeks,
I'm sure it was not three,
Till this fair lady began to weep,
She wept most bitterly.
5. Are you weeping for my gold,
Or is it for my store?
Or is it for your house carpenter,
Whose face you'll see no more?
6. I'm neither weeping for your gold,
Nor either for your store,
It's only weeping for my tender little babe,
Whose face I'll see no more.
7. What banks, what banks before us now,
As white as any snow?
It's the banks of Heaven, my love, she [sic] replied, [1]
Where ail good people go.
8. What banks, what banks before us now,
As black as any crow?
It's the banks of Hell, my love, she replied,
Where you and I must go.
9. They hadn't been gone but about three weeks,
I'm sure it was not four,
Till that fair ship began to sink,
It sank to rise no more.
1. Bronson's [sic], implying that it should be "he replied."