No Sir- Lura Wagoner (NC) c.1916 Brown B
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore; 1952 Vol. III. Their notes follow. This version was recorded in 1921 and the music appears in Volume 5 along with two other musical examples.
This is another version based on or similar to the 1881 print version by Mary Wakefield.
R. Matteson 2017]
14. No, Sir
This courting song, also known as 'My Father was a Spanish Merchant,' goes back with some changes in the course of time to the seventeenth century and has been many times printed in popular songbooks; see Kittredge's very thorough bibliographical note to Tolman's Ohio texts, JAFL xxxv 406-7. In some texts it shows contamination with 'Madam, I Have Gold and Silver.' It has been reported as traditional song from Virginia (FSV 237), Kentucky (BKH 81; TKMS 98-101 may be reckoned a form of it), Tennessee (BTFLS III 96), Arkansas (OFS iii 104-5), Ohio (JAFL xxxv 405, BSO 146). Indiana (Wolford 73-4, as a play-party song), and Iowa (MAFLS xxix 44); it is listed in Miss Pound's syllabus: forms of it appear in Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs and in JFSS iv 208 (Dorset); and it is no doubt known and sung much more widely than this list would indicate.
B. 'No, Sir." From the manuscript songbook of Miss Lura Wagoner of Vox, Alleghany county, lent to Dr. Brown in 1936; the entries in the book were probably made some twenty or more years earlier.
1. 'Tell me one thing, tell me truly,
Tell me why you scorn me so.
Tell me. when 1 ask a question.
You will always answer 'No.'
Chorus: No, sir, no, sir, no, sir, no, sir,
No, sir, no, sir, no, sir, no.
2. 'My father was a Spanish merchant,
And, before he went to sea,
He told me to be sure and answer
"No" to all you said to me.'
3. 'If, when walking in the garden,
Plucking flowers all wet with dew,
Tell me. would you be offended
If I walk and talk with you?
4. 'If, when walking in the garden,
I should ask you to be mine
And should tell you that I love you,
Would you then my heart decline?'