Rude & Rambling Boy- Buna Hicks (NC) 1941 Warner
[From: Traditional America Folk Songs. Taken from Buna Vista Hicks, the wife of Roby Presnell and the aunt of Rena Hicks, who also had a version. Buna learned it from Rebecca Harmon, a wealth of ballads and Jack tales that she learned from her father Council and family.
This is a version "Cruel Father" broadside (my B version) which has the 'rambling boy' opening. After the cruel father discovers his daughter is in love with the "wild and roving lad" the father presses him to sea, where the lad is killed by a cannonball. His ghost haunts the father that night and later his daughter hangs herself leaving a note that blames her father. It ends with the "Died for Love" stanza.
This is an archaic version and is worn through time. The second half of the first stanza is a distortion of "Nelly's Constancy" a broadside of 1686 which has several stanzas similar to those found in "Butcher Boy" and other Died For Love songs.
This is a different ballad with a different plot than the fundamental Died for Love songs and is included- so noted.
R. Matteson 2017]
Rude and Rambling Boy- sung by Buna Hicks of Beech Mountain, NC collected in 1941, collected by Frank and Anne Warner.
Learned from her mother-in-law Rebecca Harmon Hicks.
I am a rude and a rambling boy,
And a rude and a rambling boy I'll be;
I give this world, I am but sure
If I had she knew she loved me so.
Her old father came this to know,
That his daughter loved me so,
He cursed, he swore among them all
He swore he'd use the cannonball.
He came home so late at night
A-grieving for his heart's delight.
Upstairs he run, the door he broke,
He found her hung by her own bed rope.
Out with his knife, and he cut her down,
And in her bosom a letter he found;
Said: Dig my grave, both deep and wide;
And bury sweet William by my side.
All on my breast lay a turtle dove,
To show the world I she died for love.