Loving Heneary- Tucker (Georgia) 1931 Henry
[From: More Songs from the Southern Highlands by Mellinger E. Henry; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 44, No. 171 (Jan. - Mar., 1931), pp. 61-115. Henry's noted follow.
This version is similar to the version published by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1919 in his 30 & 1 Folk Songs from the Southern Mountains.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
4. YOUNG HUNTING
(Child, No. 68).
"Loving Heneary". Obtained from Mrs. Mary Tucker, Varnell, Georgia. This is interesting as illustrating the way the singers of the southern highlands sometimes mix up their songs. Beginning with the stanzas from "Young Hunting", the song goes off into what, for want of a better name, may be called "The Forsaken Girl" group (Cf. Josephine McGill: Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 50). Campbell and Sharp (No. 15) have six variants and six tunes of "Young Hunting". Cox (No. 9) gives two. Reed Smith (South Carolina Ballads, p. 107) has one which has been quoted by Sandburg. Arthur Palmer Hudson (Specimens of Mississippi Folk-Lore, No. 9) has a fragmentary version. See also Journal, XX, 252; and XXX, 297. The song is mixed up with "The False Young Man" which, Campbell and Sharp remark, is probably derived from "Young Hunting". See Campbell and Sharp, No. 94, and note, p. 333. Cf. stanza 4 of A with stanza 8 of the present song and stanza 9 of C with stanza 6 of this song. Both these stanzas from "The False Young Man" are nearly identical with those mentioned in the following song.
1. "Come in, come in, loving Heneary," she said,
"And stay all night with me,
For it has been fully three quarters of a year,
Since I changed one word with thee."
2. "I won't come in or I can't come in,
For I have not a moment of time;
Besides all of that, you have true lovers of your own;
Your heart is no more mine."
3. "Your heart, it once was mine, my love;
Your arms die across my breast,
But you made me believe by the false lies you swore,
That [the] sun rose in the west.
4. "As many stars in the sky above
As the green grass below;
That many curses shall be sent upon your head,
For treating any poor girl so.
5. "I wish to the Lord my baby was borned,
And on its Dady's knee;
And me, a poor girl, was dead and gone
And green grass growing over me.
6. "I wish, Lord, I never bin borned,
Or a-died when I was young:
I would never would of wet my cheeks in tears
For the sake of no man's son.
7. "If I live till another year
And God will give me grace,
I will buy a bottle of simon water
To wash your flattering face.
8. "While other girls can go abroad
And hear the small birds sing,
Me, a poor girl, have to stay at home
And rock the cradle and sing."