Love Henery- Grigorief (AR) 1950 Parler A
[From Ozark Folksong Collection Reel 78, Item 5. Collected by Merlin Mitchell. Transcribed by Mary C. Parler, who comments below. If you compare this to Dusenbury's version they aren't similar- so the "old lady" was probably a different old lady.
R. Matteson 2014]
"I learned it from a boy named Gene Horn from Little Rock, and he learned it from an old woman down there. I think he fixed it up a bit, and I know I did." (The "old woman" was Mrs. Emma Dusenbury of Mena. MCP)
Love Henery- Sung by Mrs. Lucy Grigorief of Fayetteville, Ark. November 20, 1950
Come in, come in, Love Henery, said she,
And stop this night with me,
It's been three months, three weary months,
Since you have pleasured me.
I can't, I can't, fair Margaret, said he,
I cannot stop with thee,
I've found a wife in Arkansas
I love far more than thee.
She taken out her little pearly knife,
Three kisses on the mouth,
She stuck him hard and then cried out,
There's a dead man in my house.
She taken him by his long, yeller hair,
She taken him by the knee,
She dragged him down to the river there,
And threw him in the deep.
Lay there, lay there, Love Henery, said she,
Till the meat rots off your bones,
No woman alive in Arkansas
Shall keep what is my own.
Then out of the woods flew a little green bird,
Out of the woods so high,
Too bad, too bad, Love Henery, sang he,
Too bad you had to die.
I wisht I had my arrow and my bow,
All strung with a leather 'n' twine,
I'd send a shot right through your heart,
And stop that song of thine.
What care I for your arrow and your bow,
All strung with a leather 'n' twine,
I'd fly away to some distant wood,
And sing from some high pine.