Jimmy Randall- Nora Hicks (NC) 1940 REC Brown C
[Fragment with music from Brown Collection IV, music of the Ballads, 1956. Notes from Volume 2 follow. The only other Hicks version I know is from Jane Hicks Gentry, Sharp A--both are related to Council Harmon/Big Sammy Hicks in Watuaga County. Unfortunately more of the text was not transcribed or recorded.
R. Matteson 2016]
76. Molly Bawn
For the history of this ballad, see Kittredge's bibliographical note in JAFL XXX 358. It has been reported as traditional song in Ireland (OIFMS 220), Norfolk (JFSS vii 17), Somerset (JFSS II 59-60), Maine (JAFL xxii 387, BFSSNE x 12-13), Massachusetts (JAFL XXX 358-9, FSONE 274-6), New Jersey (JAFL Lii 56-8), Virginia (SharpK i 330-1, SCSM 1 16-17, FSV 68-9), West Virginia (FSS 339-41), Kentucky (JAFL xxx 359-6o, SharpK i 329, 331-2), Tennessee (SharpK i 329), North Carolina (SharpK I 328, FSRA loi), Mississippi (FSM 145-6), Florida (SFLQ viii 176), Arkansas (OFS i 257), Missouri (OFS i 254-6), Michigan
(BSSM 66-8), and Wisconsin (JAFL lii 32, from Kentucky).
Our texts are incomplete; they should end with the appearance of Molly's ghost to free her lover of the charge of murder. Sharp, noting in the song "a strange admixture of fancy with matter of fact," thought that it might be "the survival of a genuine piece of Celtic or, still more probably, of Norse imagination." The woman's name appears in various forms: Molly (or Polly) Van, Vaughn, Bawn, Bond, Bonn; in a stall print by J. Andrews of New York as Polly von Luther! The man is Jimmy; in many texts, as in our A, is Jimmy Randall.
C. [Jimmy Randall] (Shooting of his Dear)- Sung by Nora Hicks of Mast's Gap, NC Sept. 28, 1940
[music]
Jimmy Randall went a-hunting, a hunting went he,
And he shot his own true love by the red apple tree.