John of the Hazelgreen- Morris (VA) 1933 Davis AA
[From More Ballads; Kyle Davis Jr. 1960; recorded in 1933. There is on excellent article on Victoria Shifflett Morris by Phil James which I've included at the bottom of the page. We can only assume that this version is another Shiflett family version of which there are two collected: 1) Raz Shiflett in 1919 (Davis H) and 2) Robert Shiflett (his son) in 1961.
The area (although it was found in other locations) of Virginia that the Shifletts lived became the repository for a version of this ballad. The Virgina Folk-Lore Society, under the direction of C. Alphonso Smith (who died in 1924) and later John Stone and Kyle Davis Jr., collected eleven texts and three melodies (Sharp collected one in 1918; Scarborough- two; Davis More Ballads- one; Foss- one). At the time their book, Traditional Ballads was being completed (c.1928) there were no other versions of John of Hazelgreen collected in the US (that would change as Barry published a version from Maine in 1929).
George Foss, who wrote an excellent article titled, From White Hall to Bacon Hollow, collected an excellent version in 1961 from Robert Shiflett, who was Raz Shiflett's son (see also Davis H; collected from Raz). Here are some excerpts:
From White Hall to Bacon Hollow is about a place and about its culture and people. I have granted myself the author's indulgence of selecting a title significant in its double meaning. White Hall to Bacon Hollow is a stretch of twisting country road, Virginia route 810, crossing the line between Albemarle and Greene Counties.
The earliest settlers of importance to the area were members of the Brown family. The patriarch of the Virginia Browns was Benjamin Brown, who began acquiring land in Albemarle County in 1747. He amassed six thousand acres of what was to become known as Brown's Cove. Included in these holdings was a tract patented to him by King George III in 1750.
It is of importance at this point to mention Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., who was a collector of ballads and folksongs specifically of Virginia. He was not a collector in the same sense as Sharp, that is a field worker and face-to-face gatherer of songs. He was more in the mold of Francis James Child, the great collector-editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, that is, he served to gather and organize, to sift and evaluate the field work of numerous amateur, hobbyist and professional collectors. As early as 1929 he produced Traditional Ballads of Virginia; in 1949 he published Folksongs of Virginia and More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, all three under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society. A courtly gentleman “of the old school,” he was professor of English literature at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a great span of time. It was professor Davis who was Paul Clayton Worthington's teacher at the University during the 1950's and inspired Paul's interest in balladry and folksong.
Two later collectors who visited and worked in the White Hall-Bacon Hollow area were Richard Chase and professor Winston Wilkinson whose manuscripts are now kept by the University of Virginia. They were the first collectors to record the songs of some of the finest singers in the region, Ella Shiflett and Victoria Shiflett Morris as early as 1935.
Some of the family names still found in northwest Albemarle County and Greene County date from pre-Revolutionary times: Brown, Frazier and Jones. Other names commonly found are Walton, Powell, Sandridge and Wood. But by far the most commonly found are Morris and Shiflett. This makes the tracing of relationships very difficult since various branches of the family are only very distantly related but share the same name. Robert Shiflett (designated “Raz's Robert,” i.e. Erasmus' son Robert, to distinguish him from the region's numerous other Robert Shifletts) speculates that the family was originally descended from French mercenaries brought over by Lafayette to aid the colonies in their War of Independence.
The Davis J version dates back to c. 1850. Below are the notes of Kyle Davis Jr.
R. Matteson 2014]
45. JOHN OF HAZELGREEN (Davis: More Ballads)
(Child No. 293)
Back in 1929 when TBVa printed ten texts and three tunes of this ballad, the editor (who is also the present editor) stated that they appeared to be the only traditional copies to be printed from American sources up to that time. The statement was correct. But in the thirty-year interval the situation has changed somewhat. Yet "John of Hazelgreen" is still an uncommon ballad. Here added to the Virginia record of the ballad is a single good text with a tune from a phonographic recording.
Child prints five texts of the ballad, all apparently from Scottish sources or collectors. The first four tell much the same story, with slightly varying details; the fifth, Child E, is a two-stanza fragment of the traditional song upon which Sir Walter Scott is alleged to have built his "Jock of Hazeldean," first printed in 1816. Since later texts often omit some details, it will be well to have in mind Child's summary of his A text: "A gentleman overhears a damsel making a moan for Sir john of Hazelgreen. After some compliment on his part, and some slight information on hers, he tells her that Hazelgreen is married; then there is nothing for her to do, she says, but to hold her peace and die for him. The gentleman proposes that she shall let Hazelgreen go, marry his eldest son, and be made a lady gay; she is too mean a maid for that, and, anyway had rather die for the object of her affection. Still she allows the gentleman to take her up behind him on his horse, and to buy clothes for her at Biggar, though all the time dropping tears for Hazelgreen. After the shopping they mount again, and at last they come to the gentleman's place, when the son runs out to welcome his father. The son is young Hazelgreen, who takes the maid in his arms and kisses off the still-falling tears. The father declares that the two shall be married the next day, and the young man have the family lands." Child B, C, and D have the shopping done in Edinburgh, and D adds the detail that the young people have seen each other only in dreams. The two- stanza Child E consists of the conversational exchange between the man and the girl, with the refrain lines:
But [or And] aye she loot the tears down fa
For John o Hazelgreen.
It is essentially a lyrical lament, without conclusion.
Since the time of Child, no traditional trace of the ballad seems to have been found in England from Scotland (Aberdeenshire) Greig-Keith (p. 244-245) report only "a most imperfect fragment" of ten lines, in which the weeping lady describes Hazelgreen. The editors note the preservation of "a stanza about his hair which does not appear elsewhere and seems to be a survival from an older version or a transference from another ballad." No tune is given, but it is noted that tunes are given by two earlier: Scottish collectors Kinloch and Christie.
The next chapter in the ballad's recorded history is the recovery, in the teens and early twenties of the present century, of the ten traditional texts and three tuners from Virginia, published in TBva, pp. 529-36 and 604. Cf these, the first nine texts, A-I, bear no very close resemblance to any Child text and that well represent a different version of the ballad as old as, perhaps older than, any of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century texts in Child. This is the most usual form of the ballad in America, and we may hereafter refer to it as the normal American text. One text, TBva J, is close to Child E and to the "Jock of Hazeldean which Sir Walter Scott is supposed to have built upon the first stanza of the traditional song. It is possible that Scott did not write as much of the song as he has been credited with.
On this point, Maurice W. Kelly contributes a brief article to Modern Language Notes XLVI (May, 1931), 304-6, in which he compares Scott's poem with Child E and with Virginia J. Confronted with the alternatives "that either Virginia is derived from Scott and entered popular balladry from literary sources, or that Scott wrote less of Jock of Hazeldean than is usually thought," he gives the latter as his verdict, largely on the basis of the Virginia text's retention of the traditional name John of Hazelgreen, as in Child E, and the limitation of both of these texts to two stanzas as compared to Scott's four. "Is it not possible," concludes Mr. Kelly "that Scott, annotating the poem at least four years after its composition, had forgotten just how much of it he took from popular sources? If that be the case Child and the editors of Scott were misled in assuming that Jock of Hazeldean derived only one stanza from popular balladry; and in the composition of his poem. Scott used some other version nearer to Virginia J than to Child E." The present editor inclines to agree. But the recent appearance of a one-stanza Florida text (Morris, p. 33o) with the title and name of the hero as "Jock o' Hazeldean" and otherwise very close to Scott's stanza, suggests that both processes may have been at work: that TBVa J and similar "John of Hazelgreen" forms represent the survival of a tradition older than Scott, though not necessarily uninfluenced by Scott, whereas the Florida text and other "Jock of Hazeldean" forms in all probability represent the appearance of Scott's poem in more or less-probably less additional forms.
Barry (pp. 369-71) gives a seven-stanza text and tune from New Brunswick, collected in 1929 and published late in that year. It is close to the normal American text, except for its unique title, "Willie of Hazel Green," and a stanza, probably imported from another ballad, in which the man is mounted upon a milk-white steed and the girl upon a bay. Barry describes the tune as "a lilting Irish melody of the modified come-all-ye type." He concludes his note as follows (p. 271) : "Our version is the first to be recorded in the North. The only American versions previously taken down are from Virginia."
In BFSSNE, No. 3 (1931), pp.9-10, Barry presents a slightly over-three-stanza text, also from New Brunswick, with a tune noted by George Herzog. Barry accurately describes the version as "an oddly zersungen variant, as to text and air, of Scott's 'Jock of Hazeldean.'" There is no doubt that Scott's poem has begun to enter, or to contaminate, the tradition.
Though Campbell and Sharp missed the ballad in their 1917 publication from the Southern Appalachians, Sharpe-Karpeles (I. 294 print a single text and tune from Nash, Va., collected in 1918. It is a normal American text of six stanzas. Dorothy Scarborough in A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, pp. 225-22 and 415-16, gives two fragmentary texts and tunes from Roach's Run and Yellow Branch, Va., respectively. Both are called "John over the Hazel Green" and are normal American texts with variations and differing degrees of fragmentation. Both places are in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where
the tradition of the ballad appears to be strong.
Two single-stanza fragments collected in Florida complete the American roster of the ballad. One was collected by E. C. Kirkland from a University of Florida summer school student in 1949, printed by him, with some misgivings, in SFLQ, XIII (December, 1949), 173, with tune. Morris's text (p. 33o) has been discussed above. Both are very close indeed, but Kirkland's closer, to Scott's first stanza and both have the title and name "Jock o' Hazeldean." The value of these texts, certainly of Kirkland's, as traditional material is subject to some question. Morris's text bears, as he says, some marks of oral transmission, if very slight ones. With the present Virginia text and tune, we are back to the normal American version, with variations. It is time now to distinguish between it and the child A-D texts. In Virginia a walker by the greenwood encounters a maid lamenting. He offers her his oldest son. She will have none but John of Hazelgreen, yet she rides away with the stranger and encounters John of Hazelgreen, who is glowingly described. He greets her affectionately and vows eternal fidelity or they do. The chief differences between the Virginia text and child A-apart from the order of stanzas are that the man makes no suggestion to the girl that Hazelgreen is married, that he does not take her up behind him or buy clothes for her, nor do they arrive at the man's house and reveal trim as young Hazelgreen's father, nor is it clearly stated that the lovers are to be married. But the difference largely omissions rather than overt changes in the story.
With the present text and tune added to those of TBVa and to the Virginia texts and tunes of Sharp-Karpeles and Dorothy Scarborough, this ballad appears to survive rather vigorously in Virginia, if not elsewhere in British or American tradition.
Victoria Shiflett Morris, with her children c. 1933
AA. "John of the Hazelgreen." phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. sung by Mrs. Victoria Morris, of Mt. Fair, Va. Albermarle County, March 19, 1933. Text transcribed by Paul Clayton Worthington. Tune noted by Winston Wilkinson. See headnote above. In addition, note "ink black road," not found elsewhere. Note also the record's uncertain ending. It is possible that the title should be "John over the Hazegreen," as in stanzas 3 and 5.
1. As I were walking one fair May morning,
All down by the greenwood side,
And there I spied a pretty fair miss,
And all alone she cried.
2. "You're welcome home, my pretty fair miss,
You're welcome home with me,
And you may have my oldest son,
A husband for to be."
3. "Oh, I don't want your oldest son,
For he's neither lord nor king,
I never intend to be the bride of none,
John over the Hazelgreen."
4. As I were riding an ink black road,
The road run near to the town,
All up stepped John my Hazelgreen,
And helped his lady down.
5. His hair were long, his shoulder were broad,
He was the flower of all his kin,
His hair hang down like links of gold,
John over the Hazelgreen.
6. 'Tis forty times he kissed her cheeks,
And forty times her chin,
And forty times her red and rosy lips,
And led his lady in.
7. "If ever I a vow break on you my love,
Oh, heaven will forsake on me,
And send me down to the torment place,
Where I never returntity." [1]
1. Davis: Mrs. Morris' last line is not entirely clear, but phonetically this seems to be what she said. Perhaps she has confused two known readings: "Where I never return to thee" and "Throughout eternity." [Matteson: The last line should be "Forever and eternity." See Robert Shiflett's version.]
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Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Victoria Morris: From Bacon Hollow to Pennsylvania Avenue
By Phil James
[pic]
Victoria Shifflett Morris with sons (l.) Fred, (r.) Alton, and (front r.) Tim. Early-1930s, near Mountfair, VA. (Courtesy of the Leonard & Victoria Morris family.)
When Ben and Icy Shifflett’s beautiful baby girl Victoria was born into the highlands of western Greene County in late fall of 1895, the name of everyone’s game was work, and none of it easy. The challenge of surviving the upcoming winter in the mountains was compounded with the arrival of their ninth child, two of whose earlier siblings had not lived beyond childhood.
Greene’s Bacon Hollow is contained by Flattop, Wyatt, Hightop and Snow Mountains. Roach River, proceeding from below Powell Gap, runs the full length of this secluded vale. Since the 1930s, residents have exchanged distant glances with the windshield explorers who stop at the hollow’s namesake overlook 1,200 vertical feet above on Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.
It was an apt description that “a woman’s work is never done,” particularly amid such remote surroundings at the turn of the 20th century. Sans electricity and with a water supply that only ran outdoors and downhill, everyday was a tough haul for Isaphrine “Icy” Shifflett simply to keep her growing family fed and clothed. Her husband Ben’s lot “from sun to sun” centered on subsistence farming and managing his minimal livestock. Wage paying jobs were seasonal, few and dangerous: stave mill jobs, cutting and dragging timber logs, saw mill work, digging sassafras stumps and roots or stripping tree bark to sell.
More often than not, any semblance of diversion from most tasks at hand involved singing ballads, to one’s self or in turn with others. This pleasing distraction was one in which several members of the Shifflett family excelled, and it was a very important part of the family and communities in which young Victoria was nurtured.
When Victoria wed Leonard Morris near Christmastime in 1919, song collectors from home and abroad had begun to wend their way into the hinterlands of Appalachia in search of the old tunes. Sometimes referred to as “songcatchers,” these collectors were typically academics. Their passion was to preserve variants of original English and Scottish popular ballads before the singers, along with their songs brought over from the old country, were lost to eternity.
Among the more preeminent of the collectors was Cecil Sharp, who made several trips to America from England during the years of the First World War. With his able assistant Maud Karpeles, he traversed the remote mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, noting down the words and tunes of a vanishing art form. Owing to the remoteness and difficult access in certain regions of Appalachia, pockets of singers could still be found who remained uncorrupted by more contemporary musical influences.
Nearing the close of his time in America in 1918, Sharp wrote in a letter to one of his hosts, former U.Va. English Professor C. Alphonso Smith, “I have found the tunes in Virginia extraordinarily beautiful; I think of greater musical value than those I have taken down anywhere else in America.”
Smith, a founder of the Virginia Folklore Society and himself an avid ballad collector, had introduced and directed Sharp to traditional singers in central Virginia. Among those local singers, a small handful eventually would be singled out for special honor.
Victoria and Leonard Morris moved to Browns Cove in northwestern Albemarle County, and, between 1922 and 1927, were blessed with three boys of their own. Leonard found ample work on the area’s farms, and, in his spare time, shaped wooden handles for all manner of hand tools, selling them through the local store. During fruit harvest seasons, they labored together alongside their neighbors in the orchards and fruit packing sheds, earning seasonal cash in an otherwise barter society.
The Great Depression sent the nation reeling. Though its effects were less visible on the rural poor than on the dependent masses in the cities, despair was prevalent throughout the land. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives offered relief work and a subsistence government wage to many of the neediest.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt quickly became known for her interest in the plights of the poor and oppressed, and she maintained a rigorous travel itinerary to that end. The same weekend in 1933 that FDR toured the Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Shenandoah National Park, the First Lady was a guest at the Whitetop Folk Festival in southwest Virginia, where she was entertained with the musical traditions of mountain singers, dancers and musicians.
John Powell, one of the organizers of the festival on Whitetop Mountain, was a Virginia native and renowned composer who had graduated in 1901 from the University of Virginia. His association with Mrs. Roosevelt led to his being invited to organize a contingent of traditional singers and musicians from central Virginia to perform in concert at the White House.
Victoria Morris was among the group chosen to accompany Powell to Washington. Her credentials had long been acknowledged by her neighbors. Scholars and authors Roger Abrahams and George Foss analyzed the repertoire and styles of many singers from the region and noted that Victoria and her Shifflett cousins Ella and Florence were “some of the most outstanding folksingers in the area.”
In attempting to describe the voice of Victoria Morris captured on early field recordings, Ernest C. Mead Jr., then-chairman of the music department and now professor emeritus at U.Va., wrote, “No system of notation can adequately catch the epic quality of Victoria Morris’ severe yet intense and figured style…”
During the long administration (1933–1945) of President Franklin Roosevelt, more than 300 diverse musical events were held at the White House. Both the President and First Lady genuinely enjoyed traditional music styles, and John Powell’s circle of performers surely did not disappoint.
Following the performance, Eleanor Roosevelt, in her usual warm and gracious manner, chatted with the group and showed them around the White House. Near the close of their time together, she asked Victoria if there might be something she would like to have as a souvenir of her visit. Having noted a rough edge on the stair railing where her hand rested, Victoria replied that she wouldn’t mind having a “splinter of wood” from the White House by which to remember her special visit. Mrs. Roosevelt replied that she would see that Victoria’s wish was fulfilled.
A short time after settling back into her busy life as wife and mother in Brown’s Cove, a package arrived from the White House. It contained a photograph of the First Lady, personally inscribed to Victoria—framed in wood that originally had been used in the reconstruction of the White House roof following its burning by the British Army during the War of 1812. The treasured keepsake had a small, engraved brass plaque affixed to it stating its provenance.
Victoria Shifflett Morris’ God-given talent for singing, nurtured and encouraged by family and friends, provided her with lifelong enjoyment, as well as a story or two to be cherished by her descendants.