Little Mathey Groves- Prather (NC) 1939 Brown H
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore- volume 4, 1957; music of the ballads. The Brown editors notes follow.
The Brown Collection gives only the third stanza of the ballad along with partial text of the first two stanzas. The Abrams collection does not give the recording, either because they are disorganized or it is missing.
"Aunt" Nancy Prather is somewhat famous for supplying Frank Proffitt with her version of Tom Dooley which eventually was recorded by the Kingston Trio and became a multi-million record seller. Proffitt calls her "Aunt" Nancy but I believe she is his great-aunt on his mothers side.
R. Matteson 2015]
OLDER BALLADS MOSTLY BRITISH
26. Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (Child 81)
For the fortunes of this ballad in America (where it has lasted much better than in the country of its origin), see the admirable discussion by Barry (BBM 150-94) ; and for its geographical range, see BSM 57-8 — adding to the references there given Vermont (NGMS 135-9), Kentucky (BTFLS in 95, TKMS 62-71), North Carolina (FSRA 25-31), Missouri (OFS I 124-6), Ohio (BSO 48-51), and Michigan (BSSM 46-9). In addition to Barry's evidences for a distinctive and early American tradition for this ballad may be mentioned certain traits common to all or most of the American texts, both north and south, and rare or absent altogether in Child's British versions. One of these is the expression "cost me deep in purse" when the lord is telling of his two swords. The only approximation to this in the Child versions is in A, from a seventeenth-century print: "Full deere they cost my purse." But in America it appears in more than a score of texts ranging from Nova Scotia and Maine to North Carolina and to Missouri, sometimes in a corrupted form that shows the locution was heard but not understood, as in Cambiaire's reading "they cost me keep in purse" (ETWVMB 53). The expression sounds rather literary than dialectal, but it is a mark of the American texts. Another item peculiar to American texts is the form of punishment meted out to the lady by her injured husband". Nowhere in American texts do we find the savagery of Child A, "He cut her paps from off her breast"; but we do find, in texts ranging again from Nova Scotia to North Carolina and to Missouri, that he "split her head in twain," sometimes in a way to show that the locution was traditional but not understood: "cut her all up into twain" (TBV E), "split her head into twine" (SharpK B). The attempt of the lady by threats or bribery to prevent the page from carrying the news of her behavior to her husband, found in Child CDEFHIJKL, does not appear in American texts. That the bugle is blown as a warning by a friend of Musgrave's, a trait that appears in three of the texts in the present collection, is not exactly diagnostic; it is found in C J L of the Child versions and may perhaps be inferred in some of the others; and it appears sporadically in American texts both north and south, e.g., in BBM Fa Fb, TBV B, SCSM A, FSRA, SharpK I J K, FSSH A B, BSM, and BSSM.
H. 'Little Mathey Groves.' Sung by Mrs. Nancy Prather. Recorded at Milam, Ashe county, August 5, 1939.
The recording is so poor that not all the words are recoverable. The text is garbled, for the first two lines evidently belong to the first, the next two to the second stanza (see below). The words with the tune correspond to stanza 3.
Scale: Mode III, plagal. Tonal Center: e-flat. Structure: abed (2,2,2,2). Measure 5 is derived from measure 2.
1 .... boy and the .... girl
The very first day of the year.
2 The first came down was a kingly bride,
And the other was a gaily girl.
3. [text above]