'Oh, Willie': An Unrecognized Anglo-American Ballad by Roger Dev Renwick
[From: Recentering Anglo/American Folksong: Sea Crabs and Wicked Youths
By Roger Dev Renwick
Read online: https://books.google.com/books?id=hpF9syICnawC&pg=PA92&dq=%22%27Oh,+Willie%27:+An+Unrecognized+Anglo-American+Ballad,%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6kPCA0YjRAhVcVWMKHTbuB9EQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22%27Oh%2C%20Willie%27%3A%20An%20Unrecognized%20Anglo-American%20Ballad%2C%22&f=false
I'm not going to give the entire text since it's not accessible. Mainly I will be giving excerpts and covering his position that "Oh Willie" should be a separate ballad.
"Oh Willie" version from the US are corrupt version of "The Cruel Father" who sent his daughter's lover to sea where he dies of a cannonball. The daughter hangs herself and leaves a note blaming the father. These are the extant early versions:
a. "The Cruel Father or Deceived Maid," from the Madden Collection, c.1790.
b. "Answer to Rambling Boy" from a chapbook by J & M Robertson, Saltmarket, Glasgow; 1799.
c. "The Squire's Daughter," printed by W. Shelmerdine and Co., Manchester c. 1800
See Nelly's Constancy for a similar opening (cf. Sharp version)
R. Matteson 2016]
"'Oh, Willie': An Unrecognized Anglo-American Ballad"
by Roger Dev Renwick
"Oh, Willie": An Unrecognized Anglo/American Ballad
Roger deV. Renwick
From: Recentering Anglo/American Folksong
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
"Oh, Willie" An Unrecognized Anglo/American Ballad The most important step in the establishment and legitimation of folksong as a scholarly field was to amass a substantial body of data. In Britain , proponents of the emerging discipline "did fieldwork" as early as the mid-iyoos, meeting with and listening to men and women who sang songs organically related to ongoing social life, both in when they were sung and in what they were about, their topics ranging from ordinary, quotidian experiences (songs of work or conviviality, for example) to rarer, life-critical ones (ballads of love relations telling ordeal-filled tales of courtship and perhaps marriage). The visitors recordedthese folksongs, building up "collections" that would outlive both themselves and their singers and eventually constitute a large enough body of data to allow serious and sustained study. Of course, not all folksong investigators did fieldwork: some ferreted out such songs as preserved in other contexts and for other reasons—in handwritten diaries and personal song copybooks (often called "ballet" books), for instance, or in self-published autobiographies and local histories, and especially in ephemeral commercial publications like broadsidesand chapbooks that interacted so intimately with oral tradition. All these sources and more provided material for the growing folksong data bank. Bythe early twentieth century, we began to follow suit in North America, contributing our share to theever-increasing storehouse of Anglo/American folksongs. When eventually a large enough body of raw material had accumulated , the need for overviews arose. Overviews may take several forms, but a critical one is the organizing and codifying of a data mass, not only to bring order to the materials but also to encourage some consensus in "OH, WILLIE" 93 scholarly approachtowardthem, some sense of engagingin a shared,productive , evolving enterprise. For Anglo/American folksong, the most successful example of such an overview was obviously Francis James Child's work on a particular subset of anglophone folksong data:narrative songs employedin everyday,face-to-face domestic performances and based on a common set of compositional principles that coalesced somewhere in late medieval Europe. Child accomplished his task so skillfully that his Englishand Scottish Popular Ballads was responsible for professionalizing the study of the folksong genrewe now call, in his honor, the "Child ballad" (Child [1882-98] 1963). When G. Malcolm Laws Jr.took his overview and published American Balladry from British Broadsides in the early 19505, his motive was essentially the same as Child's. Although by the time he did his work, Laws—unlike Child—didn't have to legitimate his data as fit for serious study, like Child he sought to identify and organize a distinct corpus: all British Isles-born songs of a certain type that had been collected from American domestic singing tradition and published by trustworthy investigators, mostly under the aegis of university presses. Laws too chose narrative songs as his subject matter, but narrative songs rooted not in the compositional conventions informing the Child ballad (a genre of trans-European diffusion that became firmly entrenched in British Isles folk tradition some time in the fifteenth century)but in those of the broadside ballad, a later compositional model that didn't really jell in the oral tradition of Anglo/American quotidian performances until the eighteenth century (Laws 1957). While his work does not have the epic quality of Child's, Laws did a very thorough job within the confines of the task he set himself. Consequently , it's hard to find a song in reputable collections available to him that he did not include in his syllabus, as long as it clearly fit his criteria for inclusion (that it exhibit a strong narrative quality and "exist in folk tradition" [Laws 1957: 1-2]). In other words, Laws seldom left out a song in error, or misidentified a ballad with its own traditional history as a version of some other item. These qualities of thoroughness and accuracy , while not manifested to the magisterial degree attained by Child, are still strong enough in Laws's work to have made his system for codifying the Anglo/American folk song repertoire of broadside ballads a standard of reference that later scholars automatically employ.1 Laws system- 94 "OH, WILLIE" atized both the typical topics anglophone North American folksingers have preferred in songs they accepted into their performancerepertoires (songs of Sailors and the Sea, for instance, or of Lovers7 Disguises and Tricks) and the identity of individual songs that kept their integrity throughout oral tradition, assigning each song both a letter designating
p.98:
If we cast our gaze at the whole Anglo/American oral song tradition, we see that "Oh, Willie" and "Butcher Boy" do not constitute a more or less independent duo but are part of a more inclusive network, or "song complex," of several interrelated--but distinguishable-- songs that include, in addition to those two, a pair of lyric pieces (quite unstable in tradition and given a variety of titles by folklorists) that I'll call "Deep in Love" [Roud 87] and "Died for Love" [Roud 60], and three ballads, "Love Has Brought Me to Despair" (Laws P25; Roud 60 [same as "Died for Love," indicating the difficulty analysts have distinguishing the two]) "In Sheffield Park" [Roud 860, not found in North America), and Sailor Boy [Laws K12 ; Roud 273)[4]. But while "Oh Willie" clearly shares episodes and
For example, in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Sharp prints only one stanza of a song given to him by Mrs. Fanny Coffey of White Rock, Virginia, on May 8, 1918. Sharp considered Mrs. Coffey's offering to be a version of "Died for Love," publishing it as the C text under that rubric (Sharp 1932: 2: 77). But the one stanza printed manifests the highly suggestive "I love you well" set of lines (here, from the
printed manifests . . . the highly suggestive "I love you well" set of lines (here, from the male's point-of-view: "Oh Saro, Saro
TEXTS:
[Oh Willie" from Mary Lou Bell of Staunton Virginia; 1932
1. William, William, I love you well
I love you more than tongue can tell.
I love you so, I dare not show,
If you do so, let no one know.
2. But when the parents came to hear,
They parted William and his dear.
And sent him on board of the "Ship of War,"
To act his part as a gallant tar.
3. When her father came home 'twas late at night,
He called for Sarah, his heart[1] still light.
Up stairs he ran, and the door he broke,
And found her hanging by her own bed rope.
4. Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Put a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on my grave place the wings of a dove
To prove to the world that I died for love.
1. heart's delight
Brown Collection:
L. "Black Birds.' Miss Lura Wagoner of Vox, Allegheny Couny, NC, 1938 Another text from Miss Wagoner's manuscript book, still further removed from the ordinary form. This is essentially the same as 'The Wrecked and Rambling Boy' reported by Hudson from Mississippi, JAFL xxxix 124-5.
1 I wish I was a blackbird among the rush;
I'd change my home from bush to bush
That the world might see
That I love sweet Willie, but he don't love me.
2 She wrote him a letter with her own right hand,
She sent it to him by her own command,
Saying, 'Oh, Willie, go, go read these lines;
They may be the last you will ever read of mine."
3 Her father came home a-purpose to know
If she was loving that young man.
So he ripped, he tore among them all.
He swore he'd fire his pistol ball.
4 Her father came home that very next night
Inquiring for his heart's delight.
He ran upstairs and the door he broke;
He saw her hand beyond a rope.
5 He drew his knife and he cut her down
And in her bosom these lines he found :
'Go, dig my grave both deep and wide
And bury sweet Willie so near my side.'
6 Well, now she's dead and under ground
While all her friends go mourning around.
And o'er her grave flew a little white dove
To show to the world that she died for love.
M. 'Sweet William.' From Thomas Smith, with the notation that it was "written down about July 1, 1915. By Miss Mae Smith of Sugar Grove, Watauga county, from the singing of her stepmother, Mrs. Mary Smith, who learned it over forty years ago." This is still further removed from the ordinary story; it begins in the first person of the man, who appears — the matter is not entirely clear — to be a faithful lover. At any rate, it is he that breaks down the door and finds the girl hanged. It is related to 'The Rambling Boy.'
I When I was a rake and a rambling boy,
My dying love both here and there.
A rake, a rake, and so I'll be,
Just like the night she courted me.
2 I wish I was some black thrush bird;
I'd change my note from bush to bush.
It's hard to love a pretty girl
That don't love me.
3 When sweet William came home at night
Inquiring for his heart's delight,
He ran upstairs, the door he broke,
Found her hung with her own bed rope.
4 He drew his knife, he cut her down,
And in her right hand this note he found :
'Go dig my grave both deep and wide
And bury sweet William by my side.'
5 The grave was dug, the corpse let down,
And all her friends stood weeping round.
Across the grave there flew a dove
To testify she died for love.
------------------
C. "The Wrecked and Rambling Boy." Communicated by Mr. T. A. Bickerstaff, a student in the University of Mississippi; from his sister Mrs. Audrey Hellums, Tishomingo, Mississippi, who sings it. A variant of "The Butcher Boy."
I. I am a wrecked and rambling boy,
My dwellings are both near and far;
A wrecked and rambling boy I'll be,
To love a girl that don't love me.
2. "I love thee, Willie, I love thee well,
I love thee better than tongue can tell;
But all this world can plainly see
I love a boy that don't love me.
3. When Julia's father came this to know,
That Julia and Willie were loving so,
He ripped and tore among them all
And swore he'd use his cannon ball.
4. When Julia's father came home at night,
He called for Julia, his heart's delight;
He ran upstairs, the door he broke,
And found her hanging by her own bed rope.
5. He took his knife and cut her down,
And on her breast this note was found:
"Go dig my grave, oh, deep and wide,
And bury dear Willie by my right side."
6. Now Julia's dead and in the ground,
And all her friends stand mourning round,
And o'er her grave flies a little dove,
To show to this world she died for love