Old Man from the North Countree- Kuykendall (NC) 1939 Brown B
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, 1952 which is one of the better US collections and has nine versions - five with music examples. Brown's notes follow. This is a short version of the older US form which was noted by Barry. Music came from Vol. 4.
R. Matteson 2014]
OLDER BALLADS MOSTLY BRITISH: 4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
For the range of this story in other lands and tongues, see Child's headnote; for its occurrence in Great Britain and America since Child's time, consult BSM 16-17 and add to the list there given Vermont (NGMS 3-4), Tennessee (BTFLS viii 71), North Carolina (FSRA 13), Florida (SFLQ viii 138-9), Arkansas (OFS I 50-2, 53-5, 59-60, 63), Missouri (OFS I 52-3, 55-8, 60-2), Ohio (BSO 17-8), Indiana (BSI 42-50), and Michigan (BSSM 32-4). Mr. Paul G. Brewster, who has made an intensive study (as yet unpublished) of this ballad, believes that, as ballad, it is definitely Scandinavian in origin, starting in Norway some time before the seventeenth century and spreading to Sweden, Denmark, the Faeroes (and thence to Iceland), Scodand, England, and America; and that the corresponding folk tale tradition is Slavic, probably Polish. The "singing bones" — the revelation of the crime by a fiddle made from the dead girl's body — have almost entirely vanished from American texts, but a trace of them is preserved in our version C. All but one of the versions in our collection belong to the common American tradition, marked by the "bow down" refrain.
B. 'Old Man from the North Countree.' Contributed by Otis S. Kuykendall of Asheville in 1939. The intercalated refrain and repeat line run through all the stanzas without change.
1 There was an old man from the North Countree
Bow down
There was an old man from the North Countree
Bow down and balance me
There was an old man from the North Countree,
He had daughters one, two, three.
I'll be true to you, my love, if you'll be true to me.
2 He bought the youngest a silken hat;
The eldest daughter couldn't stand that.
3 They walked down to the water's brink.
The eldest pushed the youngest in.
4 She floated down to the miller's dam.
The miller pulled her to dry ground,
5 From her hands he took five rings,
And then he pushed her in again.
6 They hung the miller on the gallows high;
The eldest daughter hung near by.