House Carpenter- Sands (NC) 1916 Sharp A
[From: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes With Lyrics & sheet Music; Collected by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, published 1917. Sharp's No. 29. is titled, The Daemon Lover. I've changed it to the more appropriate title- House Carpenter.
Compare to verse 4 another Madison Co. singer, Doug Wallin:
7 Then she dressed up in a yellow robe,
Most glorious to behold,
And she walked the street all around and about,
And shined like glittering gold.
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.
House Carpenter- Sands (NC) 1916 Sharp A
1 If you could have married the King's daughter dear,
You'd better have married her;
For lately I got married to a house-carpenter,
And I'm sure he's a nice young man.
2 If you will forsaken your house-carpenter
And go along with me,
I will take you away where the grass grows green
On the banks of sweet Da Lee.
3 She picked up her tender little babe
And give it kisses three.
Stay here, stay here, my tender little babe,
And keep your papa company.
4 She dressed herself as in a yellow rose, [robe]
Most glorious to behold,
And she walked the streets all round and about,
And shined like glittering gold.
5 They had not been on the sea more than two weeks,
I'm sure it was not three,
Till she begin to weep and mourn
And wept most bitterly.
6 Are you weeping for your gold?
Or are you for your store ?
Or are you weeping for your house-carpenter
That you never shall see no more?
7 I'm neither weeping for my gold,
Nor neither for my store;
I'm weeping about my tender little babe
I left a-sitting on the floor.
8 And if I had it's all the gold
That ever crossed the sea,
So free would I give it to see land again
And my tender little babe with me.
9 If you had all the gold
You should give it all to me,
For you shall never see land any more,
But stay here for ever with me.
10 Don't you see yon light cloud arising
As light as any snow?
That's the place called heaven, she says,
Where all righteous people go.
11 Don't you see yon dark cloud arising
As dark as any crow?
That's the place called hell, she says,
Where I and you must go.
12 They had not been on the sea more than three weeks,
I'm sure it was not four,
Till the ship sprung a leak, to the bottom it went,
And it went to rise no more.