How Come this Blood?- Barker (VA) 1941 Brown D
[My title--How Come this Blood? From Brown Collection of NC, 1952; one of four versions from Vol. 2 and Vol. 4. Brown editors' notes follow. Barker's version is recorded and can be heard online (Abrams Collection). The text as sung on the recording is different from the Brown Vol. 4 text and also the Barton. This makes it clear he sang different versions. It seems to me that Barker's version is not a Tennesse version from his childhood but was learned possibly from Richard Chase (Chase 1935) and is associated with the Whitetop Festival in Virginia- more investigation is necessary.
The version of Edward by James York that ends on the relative minor chord (different melody than Barker's) has the same text given by Brown editors for Barker. This text (see below) is similar but different than Barkers. You can hear York's version here:
http://contentdm.library.appstate.edu/docapp/abrams/field_recordings/edward4.html
York's version has the ending of the verse:
That plowed the fields for me, me me,
That plowed the fields for me.
Abrams said on the recording that he thought York's version was based on Barker's but it may be a similar yet different version.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
7. Edward (Child 13)
Although 'Edward' in the version from which it is named stands at or near the head of English balladry in beauty and power, it is neither very old — Percy's print of 1765 is the earliest record of it — nor very frequent in tradition — Child knew but two versions and a fragment — nor, apart from the Percy and Motherwell versions, a very notable ballad. Percy had his version. Child's B, from Sir David Dalrymple; and the skill and dramatic power of its structure, especially its revelation of the whole meaning of the story in the final stanza, has occasioned doubt of its being really a "popular," i.e., a folk ballad, at least in this version.* The only record of it in modern England is in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society iii (1938) 205-6, where Miss A. G.
[* Professor Archer Taylor, Edward mid Sven i Rosengaard (University of Chicago Press, 1931), has analyzed all the versions — English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and American — and concludes that the Percy-Dalrymple form is not the original form, though he thinks that the ballad originated in Britain and traveled to Scandinavia. Later, Professor Bertrand H. Bronson (SFLQ iv [1940] 1-13 and 159-61 ) argues with considerable force that the Percy version is a form of conscious art, especially in its climax, where it is revealed that the murder was devised by the mother. To these it might be added that in no other version is it the father that has been killed; commonly it is a brother, and frequently on no other provocation than his having cut down a bush. The Scandinavian texts are numerous but generally late; Olrik mentions a "comic" text in a manuscript of the 1640's and a parody of it printed as a broadside in 1794, but the other Scandinavian texts were taken down in the nineteenth century.]
Gilchrist gives a seven-stanza text as sung in a Cheshire "Soul-Caking," that is, the Cheshire form of the St. George mumming. In this country it has been found in Virginia (TBV 120-9, SharpK I 50-2, SCSM 183-4), Tennessee (SharpK i 47-8), North Carolina (SharpK 1 46-7, 49, 53), South Carolina (SCSM 181-2), Florida (FSF 248-50), Mississippi (FSM 70-2), Texas (in a release of the University of Texas News Service dated March 24 [1941?]), the Ozarks (OMF 207-8, OFS i 124-6), Ohio (BSD 23-4), and California (CFLQ V 310-11 ). Most of the texts, both from the English-speaking and from the Scandinavian countries, end with a series of bequests, a feature which this ballad shares with 'Lord Randal,' 'The Two Brothers,' and 'Lizzie Wan.' Many texts, the Scandinavian especially, have various ways of saying "never" when the son is asked when he will return from exile — or death.
D. 'How Come this Blood?.' From Dr. W. A. Abrams' recording of the singing of Horton Barker from Chilhowie, Virginia, September 14, 1941. The same singer sang this song again to the present editor, who visited the blind singer in Virginia in the summer of 1952. The title is that given by this singer. The recording of Pat Frye's singing referred to in II, 43 was not found. The textual variants should be noted.
[Music upcoming]
For melodic relationship cf. ***SharpK i 47-8, No. 8D. Our version is very closely related to Sharp's, especially in the variations. They are practically identical in the second stanza, where both are melodically different as well as shorter than the first. As in the Sharp version the singer alternates these two stanzas ABAB. A like relationship will be found (measures 3-10) with SCSM 405, version B, and BT 103.
Scale: Mode II, plagal. Tonal Center: e. Structure: abcdd1 (2,2,2,2,2).
Text as sung by Horton Barker
http://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/4a658017413f85fc2e7e356302798dd4.mp3
1. 'How come this blood on your knife, dear son?
Oh, dear son tell me!'
'It is that blood of the old grey horse
That plowed the fields for me, [1]
That plowed the fields for me.'
2 'It looks too red for the old grey horse,
That plowed the fields for me,
That plowed the fields for me.'
3 'How come that blood on your knife, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!'
'It is the blood of the guinea grey hound
That ran the deer for me,
That ran the deer for me.'
4. 'It looks too red for the guinea grey hound,
That ran the deer for me,
That ran the deer for me.'
5 How come that blood on your knife, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
It is the blood of my youngest brother
Who went away with me,
Who went away with me.
6 And what did you fall out about?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
Because he cut a little apple bush
That soon would've made a tree,
That soon would've made a tree.
7 And what will you do now, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
I'll set my foot into yonder ship
And I'll sail across the sea,
And I'll sail across the sea.
8 And when will you come back, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
When the sun sets in beyond the sycamore tree,
And that will never be,
And that will never be.
9 And what will become of your dear little boy?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
The world to wander in up and down.
For he never shall know of me,
For he never shall know of me.
10 And what will become of your wife, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
Sorrow and trouble all of her life,
For she'll see no more of me,
For she'll see no more of me.
11 And what will you leave to your mother, dear son?
Oh, dear son, tell me!
The curse of God I leave to you
For bringing this trouble on me,
For bringing this trouble on me.
1. Brown editors have, "That plowed the fields for me, me me," but Barker does not sing it that way on the Abrams recording. James York however does sing it that way. It's probable that Barker changed this when he made Abrams recording.