Love Henry- Hill (AL) c1898 Arnold
[From: Byron Arnold, Folksongs of Alabama, 1950, p 60 and reproduced in Bronson II, 70-71 (example 68.19). This was "Sung by Lena Hill, Lexington, Alabama, in 1945. Recorded by Bob Dylan, 1993.
Hill wrote the text written when a girl. Her father was James J. McGee, born in Lauderdale County Alabama, October 11, 1851. His parents were Irish. He was a farmer of those good old days. Hill says "I was born on March 4, 1884. I am sixty-two years old and lived with my father and mother until l was twenty-two then I married to Mr. Thomas C. Hill.
Arnold wanted to have hill recorded her songs: "When I left on these last trips [1946] I got authorization to take the singers to local radio stations to make recordings of their songs. Unfortunately this plan did not work, as Callie Craven of Gadsden, from whom I got twenty-two songs in 1945, died two weeks before I arrived there. Lena Hill of Lexington flatly refused to go to a radio station, saying, "I'm not goin' up thar to have them laugh at my songs." In Mobile, Corie Lambert's son had suddenly died of a heart attack and I could not ask her to sing. These ladies were the three richest sources of folk songs last year."
According to John Way's article "World Gone Wrong - More About the Songs" in The Telegraph No. 47 (pp. 34-35), eight (out of nine) verses of Dylan's version and the tune are "from a variant appearing in Bryan Arnold's 'Folksongs of Alabama'", collected from Ms. Lena Hill of Lexington, AL, in 1945.
R. Matteson 2014]
Love Henry- Lena Hill c.1898
1. Get down, get down, love Henry, she cried
And stay all night with me.
I have gold chairs and the finest I have
I'll apply them all to thee.
2. I cant get down nor I shant get down
Nor stay all night with you
Some pretty little girl in Cornersville
I love true better than thee.
3. He laid his head on a pillow of down
The kisses she gave him three
With the penny knife that she held in her hand
She murdered mortal he.
4. Get well get well love Henry she cried
Get well, get well said she
Oh don't you see my own hearts blood
A flowing down so free.
5. She took him by his long yellow hair
And also by his feet
She plunged him in well water
Where it runs both cold and deep.
6. Lie there, lie there, Love Henry she cried
Till the flesh rots off your bones
Some pretty little girl in Cornersville
Will mourn for your return.
7. Hush up, hush up, parrot she cried
Don't tell no news on me
All these costly beads around my neck
I'll apply them all to thee.
8. Fly down fly down, pretty parrot she cried
And lie on my right knee
And the doors of your cage shall be decked with gold,
And hung on a willow tree.
_______________________