How do you like my bed?- Mitchell (NC) 1918 Sharp Q
[My abbreviated title. Single (middle) stanza with music from English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians I; Sharp/Karpeles 1932, p. 161-182, versions A-Q. Notes from 1932 edition and notes from Sharp's diary follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
1932 Edition Notes: No. 23. Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.
Texts without tunes:— Child s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 81. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 125. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 94. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxiii. 371; xxv. 182.
Texts with tunes:—Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 92. Chappel's Popular Music of the Olden Times, i. 170. MotherwelJ's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, tune No. 21. W. R. Mackenzie's Ballads and Sea Songs of Nova Scotia, No. 8. Wyman and Brockway's Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs, pp. 22 and 62. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxx. 309. British Ballads from Maine, p. 150. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 289 and 577.
Sharp diary 1918 page 273. Friday 27 September 1918 - Burnsville:
Wrote up tunes all the morning and a long letter to Peggy Kettlewell. After tea we went round to Mitchell Town first calling on Mrs Hannah Mitchell. Hannah was out but Mrs Doovey who was there received us and poured out her sorrows concerning her cow which had strayed away into the mountains 2 days ago and despite numerous search parties had not yet been discovered. We listened for a long while and commiserated as best we could and then went on to Mrs Effie. After some conversation she sang me 4 or 5 songs — very good ones — and we returned home well satisfied with our plunder. The Mitchells are a wonderful clan, living in a small narrow creek about a mile from the hotel. They are considered a very low-down lot by the richer people here who wonder why we like them & go there so often. Mrs Hannah is the mother and three daughters, Mrs Effie, Mrs Becky and Mrs Dovey. Old Mrs Polly Mitchell is I believe her sister in law.
Q. [How do you like my bed?] Sung by Mrs. EFFIE MITCHELL at Burnsville, N. C , Sept. 27, 1918. Hexatonic (Tonic probably C).
It's how do you like my fine feather bed,
And how do you like my sheet,
And how do you like my pretty little Miss
That lies in your arms and sleeps ?