My Father Oh No- nurse (SC-NC) c.1921 Brown D
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, II, 1952 and Volume IV, music. Listed as 30. The Maid Freed from the Gallows (Child 95).
Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
For preceding records of this ballad and its relation to theories of communal origin, see BSM 66, adding to the references there given New Hampshire (NGMS 117-18), Kentucky (BTFLS in 95), Tennessee (SFLQ XI 129-30), North Carolina (FSRA 35-6), Florida (FSF 295-9), Arkansas (OFS I 146-8), Missouri (OFS I 143-4, 145), Ohio (BSO 62-4), Indiana (BSI 125-7), and Michigan (BSSM 146-8 — this last being the "golden ball" form, rare in this country). In only half of the North Carolina texts is it a woman that waits to be freed from the gallows ; in versions B C E K L it is a man, and in D the sex is indeterminate. D is the only one of our texts in which the song has been turned into a play.
D. 'My Father Oh No.' Mrs. Sutton describes this use of the song as a child's game: "My nurse, a little African-American[1] from Newberry, S. C, was playing a sort of dialogue game with my children. It is a corrupted arrangement of the 'Maid Freed from the Gallows' or 'Hangman's Song.' It goes like this:
My father oh no, my father oh no,
Have you brought me any silver or gold?
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no
I didn't bring you no silver and gold.
I came to you, I came to you,
I came to see you hanged, my dear.
You need a shady tree.
"It follows the usual rigmarole — Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, and Sweetheart. My oldest, Betty, was the 'maid.' The nurse the relatives and friends. The little African-American[1] said she learned it down home."
1. edited for racial content