House Carpenter- York (NC) 1939 Brown L (Abrams No. 3)
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. The complete MS text is housed in the Abrams Collection. James R. York, (1907-1986) and his wife were frequent contributors- both are excellent singers and were collectors as well as informants. There's also a recording of Mrs. York dated 8/20/1939 (see Abrams: ) singing two stanzas a bluesy/jazzy version. It's unclear if her text is substantially different.
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
40. James Harris (The Daemon Lover) Brown Collection
(Child 243)
If the various traditional versions of this ballad all go back, as Child believed, to the long-winded, pedestrian seventeenth-century broadside of 'James Harris,' they constitute something of an argument for Barry's doctrine of communal re-creation. For its range as traditional song, see BSM 79, and add New Hampshire (NGMS 95-7), Tennessee (SFLQ xi 127-8), North Carolina (FSRA 38-40), Florida (SFLQ viii 160-1), the Ozarks (OFS I 166-76), Ohio (BSO 70-7), Indiana (BSI 136-48, JAFL lvii 14-15), Illinois (JAFL LX 131-2), Michigan (BSSM 54-8), and Wisconsin (JAFL LIT 46-7, originally from Kentucky). Few regional collections made in this country fail to record it ; [1] it is therefore surprising that Child knew, apparently, only one American text and that a fragment. It is almost always called in America 'The House Carpenter.' The notion that the lover from the sea is a revenant or a demon, present in the original broadside and less definitely in some of the other versions in Child, has faded from most American texts; with us it is a merely domestic tragedy. And perhaps for that very reason it is one of the favorites of American ballad singers. There are some fourteen texts in the North Carolina collection, most of them holding pretty closely to one version. A full text of this version is given first and most of the others described by reference to this.
Footnote for above:
1. There are traces of it in our K and M versions.
L. 'House Carpenter.' Secured from James York, Olin, Iredell county, in 1939. Ten stanzas, fairly close to A but shifting in stanza 7 from the third person of the lover to the first person:
7. She dressed herself in her fine richery.
Most beauteous to behold,
And as she glided along with me
She outshined that glittering gold.
Complete text:
1. "Well met, well met," said an old true love,
"Well met, well met," says he.
I once could have married a king's daughter,
And she would have married me.
2. "If you could have married a king's daughter,
I'm sure you are to blame;
For I have married a house carpenter,
And I think he's a nice young man.
3. "If you will leave your house carpenter
And go along with me
I'll take you where the grass grows green
On the banks of the sweet Willie. "
4. "If I should leave my house carpenter
And go along with thee
Have you anything to maintain me upon
To keep me from slavery?"
5. "I have three ships a sailing on the sea
A hundred and ten young men
And if you will marry me
You may have them at your command. "
6. She picked up her sweet little babe
And kissed it one, two, three,
Saying, "Stay at home you sweet little babe
For to keep your papa company. "
7. She dressed herself in her fine richery
Most beauteous to behold
And as she glided along with me
She out shined that glittering gold.
8. We hadn't been on that board more than three weeks
I'm sure that it was not four
Till there sprung a leak in the bottom of the ship
And she sank for to rise no more.
9. "Is it for your house carpenter you weep
Or is it for your store
Or is it all about your sweet little babe
That you never shall see any more?"
10. "It is not about my house carpenter that I weep
Nor is it for my store
But its for my sweet little babe
That I never shall see any more. "
Collected from James York
August 20, 1939