How do you like your pillow- Mayo(VA) 1918 Sharp P
[My 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 117. Wednesday 24 April 1918 - Afton
Maud not well so stays in bed for breakfast. I go to Greenwood making friends with a Mr Langdon an orchardist. He went with me in the train & discussed English politics. He said Asquith was a notorious drunkard a very weak, superficial person who relied on his power of oratory to win over the mob — a sort of William Jennings Bryan he said! This comes from reading Maxse I discover![1] At Greenwood I went to the school and saw Miss Maxwell (engaged to H. M. Macmanaway!) but couldn’t get any eventually[?] information from her or from her children. But I heard of a Mrs Mayo between Greenwood and Afton and on my way back called on her and got 5 very good tunes. Eat my bread & cheese in a wood and tramped home about 5 or 6 miles calling on several cottages but not getting anything good enough to take down. Got home at 4.30 and had tea with Maud who afterwards got up for the evening meal. I wrote my tunes out in the evening and also some letters to Professor Cox of Morgantown[?], Mrs Callery and Susannah . Weather fine and quite hot in the middle of the day when tramping along a dusty road, but very chilly in the evening when the wind changed round to the east. We may be in for some cold weather again I fear.
1: Leopold Maxse (1864-1932), right-wing journalist, owner of the National Review, who referred to H. H. Asquith (Prime Minister 1908- 16) as H. H. Boozle.
P. [How do you like your pillow?] Sung by Mr. CLEAVER MAYO at Greenwood, Va., April 24, 1918.
Heptatonic. Mixolydian influence.
And how do you like your pillow, said he,
And how do you like your sheet,
And how do you like your dala lay [1]
That lies in your arms a sleep?
1. mishearing of "gay lady"