Molly Dear- Harwood (NC) 1931 Scarborough B
[Date as supplied by Bronson, indicates the approximate time the ballads or songs had been collected. From: Scarborough; "A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains" 1938, published posthumously. Her notes follow.
She mentions an Irish origin and offers no proof. This version is mixed with East Carolina Blues/Old Virginny songs.
R. Matteson 2016]
AWAKE! AWAKE!
This is an Irish ballad, which fact explains its omission from Child's collection, or from the Virginia volume which limits itself to Child items. It is given by Cecil Sharp in his English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, listed as a ballad, and he notes its previous appearances in Britain (Gavin Grieg's Folk-Song of the North-East, I, arts. 54, 123; Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 225, etc.). Professor Kittredge has a note on it in the Journal of American Folk-Lore,XX,260, as a variant of a song which Allan Cunningham knew in a Nithsdale version and quotes in part in a note to "O, my luve's like a red, red rose," in his edition of Burns, 1834, IV, 285.
Sharp gives it under the title of "Arise, Arise," I, 72. Baskerville discusses it as one of a group of songs in "The Night Visit," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXXI, 566 et seq.
Flonnie Harwood wrote this down in the notebook which the
girls of the weaving room gave to Miss clementine Douglass, of Asheville.
(B) Mollie (sic) Dear, Go Ask Your Mother [original spelling kept]
Wake up, wake up, you drowsy sleeper,
Wake up, wake up, for it's almost day,
how can you stand to sleep and slumber
When youre old true lover's going away?
Once I lived in old Virginia,
to North Carolina I did go.
there I spyed a nice young lady
ah, her name I do not know.
her hair was black and her eyes were sparking
and her cheeks were diamond red,
and. on her breast she wore a lily
ah, the tears that I did shed.
When I'm sleep I'm dreaming about her,
When I'm wake I see no rest.
Every moment seems like an hour,
ah the Pain that crossed my breast.
oh Molly dear go ask your mother
if you my bride can ever be.
if she says no come back and tell me,
and I no more will trouble thee.
ah I'll not go ask my mother
for she lise[1] in her bed at rest
and in her hand she holds a dagger
to kill the Man that I love best.
1. lies