Lord Lovel- Coffey (NC) 1920 Brown D
[My date. From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore; Vol. 2, 1953. The editors' notes follow. Brown D is two versions; no text is provided for Becky Gordon's version (Da). The Coffey text (Db) is only one stanza but it's the rare, "That's too long" stanza found i nthe older versions of the ballad and not in the broadside/print versions.
R. Matteson 2015]
Lord Lovel (Child 75)
Possibly it is the very simplicity of the sentiment that has made this ballad so persistent a favorite; certainly it has little else (unless, perhaps, the tune) to commend it. For its range since Child's time, both in the old country and in America, see BSM 52. To the texts there listed should be added Kentucky (BTFLS iii 92), Tennessee (SFLQ xi 124-5), North Carolina (FSRA 27-8), Florida (SFLQ viii 150-2), Missouri (OFS i 113-15). Ohio (BSO 39-45), Indiana (BSI 79-91), and Michigan (BSSM 27-8). The texts vary but little, going back, perhaps in all cases, to a London broadside of a hundred years ago, Child's H. To the variations in the name of the church whose bells announce the death of the lady, some of which are listed in BSM, North Carolina adds one more, "St. Banner's" (version B below). For the most part the church is not named in the North Carolina texts; Lord Lovel returns to "Cruel Clark's" (A), to "London Tower" (C), to "London town" (D F G) and hears the bells, but the church is not named. For an adaptation to the purposes of political satire during the Civil War, see volume 111, section ix.
The texts are so much alike that only a few are given in extenso.
Da. 'Lord Level.' As sung for Mrs. Sutton by Mrs. Becky Gordon of Cat's Head, Saluda Mountain, Henderson county, in 1920 or thereabouts. Again a representative text, with the opening of the coffin and the kissing of her clay-cold lips, but without the rose-and-brier ending. In her account of getting it Mrs. Sutton gives a most interesting picture of the region and especially of the ruins of a fine place built before the Civil War, when the South Carolina planters used to come up to this mountain country for the hot weather.
Db. 'Lord Loven.' Mrs. Sutton notes that the song was sung also by "Aunt Nancy Coffey, who lived in the Grandfather section of Caldwell," with the addition of a stanza after Lord Loven (as Aunt Nancy called him) tells how long he will be gone:
'That's fur too long,' Lady Nancybelle said,
'That's fur too long.' said she.
'You're apt to furget Lady Nancybelle
And take up with some other lady.'
Aunt Nancy took a pessimistic view of the other sex.