Loving Henry- Swetnam (KY) 1936 Hudson B
[Hudson; Folksongs of Mississippi; 1936. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
9. YOUNG HUNTING
(Child, No. 68)
Two texts-one of only one stanza-have been recovered. For other American texts, see Campbell and Sharp, No. 15; Cox, No. 9; Davis, No. 17; Reed Smith, No. 41 Sharp, Songs, I, p. 16; Barry, No. 13.
B.
From the same source as the A text. Mr. Swetnam, who is one of my former students and who collected his texts under my supervision, told me that his mother sang this stanza to a difierent tune and felt sure that it represented a version different from A. Compare the name "Sir Robin" in A with the name "Loving Henry" in the following. Mr. Swetnam remarks in his own note to these texts: "B is closer to Child F than to any other variant and agrees closely with the better known American versions. A is entirely different from any other texts I have seen. It is more like Child E than any other, but makes the young man married to his murderess."
"Lie there, lie there, loving Henry," said she,
"Till the flesh rots from your bones,
And the girl you left in the Arkansas land
Will think you are long coming home."