Jessel Town- Texas Gladden (VA) 1917 Davis BB
[My footnotes. From: More Traditional Ballads from Virginia; Davis 1960. Also recorded by Lomax 1941 - the text is nearly identical.
Texas Gladden (1894–1967) was born Texas Anna Smith, in Rich Valley, Smyth County, Virginia, the daughter of Alexander King Smith and his wife Sarah Louvenia (née Hammonds); the name Texas was taken from that of an aunt. She married Jim Gladden in 1912 at the age of seventeen. In 1930, the couple lived in Salem, Virginia with their seven children (she had nine in all); Jim worked as a laborer. She and her brother Hobart Smith became recognized as traditional singers while attending the White Top Music Festivals, which ran from 1931 to 1939. [Wiki]
Hobart Smith's version is the same as his sister Texas Gladden's. [Listen: Hobart Smith- The Little Schoolboy]
It's unclear if the 1917 text is taken from Gladden, although it seems this must be so. The question arises regarding the 1917 date: Why didn't Davis include this in TBVa in 1929 since Peel was a contributor and Davis included every good text? Read Davis' notes which follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
THE TWA BROTHERS
(Child, No. 49)
Child prints ten versions of this ballad, one of the few known to him in an American version. It does not seem to persist in present-day tradition in either England or Scotland; at least it does not appear in either Margaret Dean-Smith's Survey or Gavin Greig's Last Leaves. Bronson (I, 384) confirms this observation. The ballad has often been collected in the United States, and eleven texts (all available) with six tunes were published in TBVa. The story changes little. Two brothers wrestle while coming home from school, and one is mortally wounded by the other's knife as a result of accident or jealousy, as in Child texts. Most Virginia texts indicate purposeful murder and are related to Child B; even when the wounding is accidental, the texts are verbally closer to Child B than to Child A.
Five versions have been collected since the publication of TBVa, one of them, EE, a later phonograph recording of version G in TBVa, there given without its tune. Of these five versions, only AA and DD retain the supernatural calling of the murdered brother from his grave by his sweetheart. In DD the idea is badly garbled, but the version is unusual in the names given the participants. The sweetheart is Fair Ellen, and the murderer Lord Thomas, seemingly taken over from "Lord. Thomas and Fair Annet," while the murdered. brother is named. Ben. In AA the blow is apparently struck from passion. In BB the murder weapon is a tomahawk, and the weapon is apparently used merely because the brother will not "play ball/Nor roll the marble stone." The bow and arrow which the dying youth wishes buried with him, coupled with the tomahawk, suggest Indian lore, but actually the bow and arrow request is English and is found in child B, leaving only the tomahawk as an American addition. In DD and EE the killing is intentional, but no clear motive is indicated. CC is the only version in which the wound seems to be accidental, but even here the dying brother seems to hint at jealousy as the motive by asking his brother to tell his sweetheart "it's for her sake I'm gone."
Interesting folklore beliefs are preserved in the ending of AA and perhaps DD: - young Susie's supernatural power to charm birds and fishes and young Johnny out of the grave, and the notion that the kissing of the deal is fatal. (See Wimberly, pp. 282-83.) In other texts (BB, cc) the ending is religious. EE is incomplete.
This ballad presents some of the finest" tunes of the collection, with a tune for every text, all except one tune minutely transcribed from phonograph records, and the one exception taken down from live performance by no less a hand than than of John Powell. Bronson (I, 384-402) prints forty tunes (with texts), plus a single variant as Appendix, and divides the forty into five groups, divided quite strictly according to the middle cadence. All forty-one variants are from American sources. Group A, of eight members, has a middle cadence on the tonic; Group B, with twelve variants, has a middle cadence on the supertonic; Group C, of ten entries, has a middle cadence on the dominant; Group D, seven members, has a middle cadence on the octave above; Group E, with three variants, contains anomalous cases; the single Appendix version is a too literary combination of "The Two Brothers" and "Edward" and is "disturbingly independent," both melodically and textually. Of the six tunes from TBVa, Bronson classifies E in Group A, H in Group B, A and I in Group C, and D and F in Group D: a very representative distribution, minus anomalies and questionable items. This Virginia record seems to corroborate Bronson's remark that "No marked regional distinctions are discernible" in his groupings. of the tunes below, AA falls into Bronson's Group C, EE into his Group A.
BB. "Jessel Town." Phonograph record-(aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, -- Sung by Mrs. Texas Gladden, of near Roanoke, Va. Roanoke county August 7, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by Winston Wilkinson. Text independently collected by Mrs. Alfreda M. Peel, of Salem, Va. May 27, 1917. The independently collected text varies only slightly from the words of the record. In Miss Peel's text, stanzas six and seven, below, are transposed, and stanza nine does not appear. After stanza seven, below, Miss Peel's text has a stanza of incremental repetition:
He picked him up on his back
And carried him to Jessel town,
And dug a hole and laid him in
That he might sleep so sound.
Miss Peel uses a different local title: "Brother's Murder." Though the town has- very little to do with the ballad (even less without the above stanza), Mrs. Gladden's title is definitely "Jessel Town," which no available atlas locates.
The tune is a delightful one, especially when rendered in strict time by Mrs. Gladden's strong and melodious voice, which at last hearing showed no signs even of middle-age.
"O brother, O brother, can you play ball
Or roll the marble stone?"
"No brother, no brother, I can't play ball
Nor roll the marble stone.
No brother, no brother, I can't play ball
Nor roll the marble stone."
He took his tomahawk from him
And hacked him across the breast,
Saying, "Now brother, I reckon you can't play ball
Nor roll the marble stone."
"Oh, take my hunting shirt from me
And tear it from gore to gore
And wrap it around my bleeding breast,
That it might bleed no more."
He took his hunting shirt from him
And tore it from gore to gore[1]
And wrapped it around his bleeding breast,
But it still bled the more.
"O brother, when you go home tonight,
My mother will ask for me,
Please tell her that I'm gone with some little school boys,
Tomorrow night I'll be at home.
6. "My dear little sister will ask for me,
The truth to her you must tell,
Please tell her that him dead and in grave laid
And buried at Jessel town.
7. "O, take me up all on your back
And carry me to Jessel Town
And dig a hole to lay me in,
That I might sleep so sound.
8 "O lay my Bible under my head,
My tomahawk at my feet,
My bow and arrow across my breast,
That I might sleep so sweet."
9 He laid his Bible under his head,
His tomahawk at his feet,
His bow and arrow across his breast,
That he might sleep so sweet.
1. gore to gore= side to side