Samuel Hall's Family Tree
by Bertrand H. Bronson
California Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1942), pp. 47-64
[Bronson (1903-1986) was an excellent writer whose The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads in four volumes was published 1959-1972. Unfortunately he could never get permission to include the important Carpenter Collection and their tunes in his volumes.
Some early country recordings include Emry Arthur's "Ethan Lang" (1930); Walter Pardon, "Jack Hall" (on Voice17); Tex Ritter, "Sam Hall" (Decca 5076, 1935). My favorite is Johnny Cash on Sings the Ballads of the True West (1965) [Click to listen- Johnny Cash].
R. Matteson- 2011]
Samuel Hall's Family Tree
BERTRAND H. BRONSON
EVERYONE is aware of the difficulties confronting any attempt to trace a popular ballad or song to its beginnings. Even the anchors of place names and dated events often fail to hold fast. One is likely to find that such elements have entered late, and are in fact mere adaptations to new circumstances. In the searchf or reliable holds upon this sandy bottom, the common ballad quatrain or couplet is of course no assistant. But once in a while a particular verse pattern serves to mark an individual identity, all the more if coupled with a typical subject matter; and it is both amusing and instructive to pursue such a song to the point where it vanishes on the horizon of the past.
Such a song is the inelegant but very generally known "Samuel Hall," versions of which are sung traditionally and vociferously on the West Coast at the present time, and which may be found on phonograph records and in many printed collections. As the writer learned it from tradition, years ago and in a comparatively enfeebled version, the song went as follows:
O my name is Samuel Hall,
Samuel Hall, Samuel Hall,
O my name is Samuel Hall
And I hate you one and all,
You're a gang of muckers all,
Damn your hide.
O I killed a man, 'tis said,
So'tis said, so 'tis said,
O I killed a man, 'tis said,
And I hit him on the head,
And I left him there for dead,
Damn his hide.
O they put me in the quad,
In the quad, in the quad,
O they put me in the quad
And they chained me to a rod
And they left me there, by God,
Damn their hide.
O the Preacher he did come,
He did come, he did come,
O the Preacher he did come
And he looked so very glum
As he talked of Kingdom Come,
Damn his hide.
O the Sheriff he came too,
He came too, he came too,
O the Sheriff he came too,
With his boys all dressed in blue;
They're a gang of muckers, too,
Damn their hide.
To the gallows I must go,
I must go, I must go,
To the gallows I must go,
With my friends all down below
Saying, "Sam, I told you so,"
Damn their hide. [1]
Much more full-bodied versions may be examined in Lomax's American Ballads and Folk Songs and in the melodramatic rendition of Carl Sandburg on a phonograph record.[2] A version close to the above, but with three other stanzas in place of the last, is printed, presumably from a Victorian music-hall specimen, in Harold Scott's English Song Book.[3]
The tune, though perhaps distantly related, is different in effect, and carries an additional phrase which is necessary to the more typical verse pattern:
So up the rope I go, up I go,
So up the rope I go, up I go,
So up the rope I go, with my friends all down below,
Saying, "Sam, we told you sol"
Damn their eyes!
I saw Molly in the crowd, in the crowd,
I saw Molly in the crowd, in the crowd,
I saw Molly in the crowd, so I hollered right out loud,
"Molly, ain't yer bloody proud?"
Damn your eyesl
So this shall be my knell, be my knell,
So this shall be my knell, be my knell,
So this shall be my knell, and I'll meet you all in Hell,
And I hope you sizzle well-
Damn your eyes!
Now, as the song was sung at Harvard, in the time of the Civil War, it presents so me interesting variations:
My name it is Sam Hall,
Chimney-sweep, chimney-sweep;
My name it is Sam Hall,
Chimney-sweep.
My name it is Sam Hall,
And I robs both great and small;
But now I pays for all,
Chimney-sweep.
Then the parson he will come...
With looks so bloody glum,
And talk o' what's to come,
Chimney-sweep.
Then the sheriff he'll come too...
With all his bloody crew,
Their bloody work to do,
Chimney-sweep.
Then up the drop we'll go...
While the people all below
'll say 'Sam Hall, I told you so,'
Chimney-sweep.[4]
In this version we are carried back to a time when robbery was a capital offense. Moreover, the criminal is now provided with a calling: he is a chimney sweep who has taken to evil courses. This tradition is confirmed by a version of about 1851 printed on a broadside by Ryal and Co., Seven Dials, London, entitled, "Jack the Chimney Sweep," and beginning "My name it is Jack 'All, chimney sweep, chimney sweep."[5] The song, we learn from the late Frank Kidson, had been popularized about that time (1845-1850) by a comic singer of the music halls named G. W. Ross;[6] it was also printed in Howe's 100 Comic Songs, p. 31, and in The Sam Hall Songster, ca. 1850. The prevalent music-hall tune was possibly the one given by Harold Scott, as above. Doubtless, the recent currency of this general version of the song derives in the main from its music-hall popularity.
There are three elements to be noted, each of which may be followed as a clue to the further history of the song: (a) the chimney sweep, (b) the criminal hero, and (c) the stanza pattern. We shall take them in turn.
CHIMNEY SWEEP
In the more familiar recent American versions the chimney sweep has disappeared. This is natural for communities where the ancient mystery of chimney sweeping has ceased to be practised, especially since the element contributes nothing essential to the narrative. In England, however, chimney sweeps still look like chimney sweeps, and in the versions of the song which Cecil Sharp picked up from folk singers in Somerset, about the beginning of our century, the criminal was always designated as a sweep. Sharp gathered four versions, and it is noteworthy that they perpetuate a purer traditional strain, untouched by the music-hall influence.
The hero's name is Jack Hall, and his song begins in the common way; but the end is carried farther than usual:
O I rode up Tyburn Hill in a cart, in a cart,
O I rode up Tyburn Hill in a cart.
O I rode up Tyburn Hill, and 'twas there I made my will,
Saying: The best of friends must part, so farewell, so farewell,
Saying: The best of friends must part, so farewell.
Up the ladder I did grope, that's no joke, that's no joke,
Up the ladder I did grope, that's no joke.
Up the ladder I did grope, and the hangman spread the rope,
O but never a word said I coming down, coming down,
O but never a word said I coming down.[7]
The tune which Sharp recorded is as follows:
It may be compared with a variant, "Johnny Hall," from County Tyrone in the last century, in the great Petrie Collection, no. 747:
I am unable to point to any record or trace of the song about the iniquitous sweep named Hall in the earlier part of the 19th, or in the latter part of the 18th, century. Frank Kidson, however, who also took down the song from tradition, determined the fact that the hero's name was altered in the music halls from Jack to Sam; and discovered that at the end of the 17th century there was a historical Jack Hall who was sold as a child to a chimney sweeper for a guinea, who thereafter took to burglary and, while still a young man, was hanged on Tyburn Tree in the year 1701.[8]
Kidson called attention to a song in Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719, Vol. II, p. 182, called "The Moderator's Dream,"- "the Words [says Durfey] made to a pretty tune, called Chimney Sweep":
that is, a new song set to an old tune of that title. There was, then, a song about a chimney sweep in existence at that date. Durfey regrettably fails to print the tune, but the stanza pattern of his new words demonstrates the relationship of the lost song with the one that we know. "The Moderator's Dream" commences thus:
Four Cardinals in Caps,
Save the Queen, save the Queen,
Four Monks with bloated Chaps,
Save the Queen:
Four Capuchins in Bays,
And to make the People gaze,
Two Hundred Lights to blaze;
Save the Queen, save the Queen.
Kidson does not mention another song in the sixth and last volume of the Pills, with the identical stanza pattern, called simply "A Song" and beginning. "A young man and a maid."[9] The tune here is unnamed, but it is in all probability the one we are seeking, of "Chimney Sweep." It goes as follows:
So far as concerns Jack Hall the chimney sweep, it will be difficult to amplify the foregoing record. If the historical character who died in 1701 actually gave rise to this particular branch of the song, we may assume a lost broadside of that year or the next, set to the tune above, as the parent from which all the songs so far cited ultimately derive. But other branches of the song will considerably widen the prospect, and to these we shall now turn.
CRIMINAL HERO AND NATIONAL HERO
In the Harvard songbook mentioned above there is, as it happens, another song about a criminal in the same stanza pattern. It celebrates the misdeeds of the famous buccaneer, Captain Kidd-Robert in the song, but historically William Kidd.[10] "Captain Kidd" has likewise circulated widely in traditional singing. There is a very full version of it in W. R. Mackenzie's Ballads and Sea-Songs from Nova Scotia.[11]The Harvard version contains seven stanzas only, but the Nova Scotia one has twenty-five, of which the following five will provide the skeleton of the song:
(1) My name was Robert Kidd when I sailed, when I sailed,
My name was Robert Kidd when I sailed.
My name was Robert Kidd,
God's laws I did forbid,
And so wickedly I did when I sailed, when I sailed,
And so wickedly I did when I sailed.
(7) I murdered William M oore as I sailed, as I sailed. ..
I murdered William Moore
And left him in his gore,
Not many leagues from shore as I sailed...
(20) Thus being o'ertaken at last, I must die, I must die ...
Thus being o'ertaken at last,
And into prison cast,
And sentence being passed, I must die ...
(23) To Execution Dock I must go, I must go...
To Execution Dock
Will many thousands flock,
But I must bear the shock, I must die...
(25) Take warning now by me, for I must die, I must die...
Take warning now by me
And shun bad company,
Lest you come to hell with me, for I must die...[12]
Here we have a narrative which, mutatis mutandis, follows the same course as "Jack Hall," is told autobiographically, and told in the same stanza pattern. The chief difference is that the hero is a water criminal instead of a land criminal. But the resemblances are so marked as to put a relationship beyond doubt.
The popularity of "Captain Kidd" as a sailor song in comparatively recent years is attested by both Captain Whall and John Masefield. [13] We can follow the song back in cheap songsters and broadsheets printed in this country for about a hundred years; and a broadside printed in England carries it back to the year 1701, when it was directed to be sung to the tune of "Coming Down."[14] We need not look for it any earlier, for at low water, on May 23, 1701, Captain Kidd met his doom at Execution Dock. Jack Hall and Captain Kidd, then, paid the final penalty for their wrongdoing on the gallows in the same year. It would be difficult to say which song got the start of the other.
To return for a moment to the twentieth century: we learn from Cecil Sharp that of the four versions of "Jack Hall" which he collected, three were sung to a tune which properly belonged to a ballad about the naval hero, Admiral Benbow. The question arises, Why this association? Benbow was a national figure: he rose, as had very few commanders before his day, from butcher's apprentice to admiral; he fought the French in the West Indies, in August, 1702; was treacherously deserted by his own captains, all but one of whom turned tail in the battle and put for home. Benbow's right leg was carried away by chain shot, but he had himself carried up onto the quarterdeck to see the fight through. He died of his wounds, in November, 1702.
There is little likeness between this heroic story of a famous admiral and the ignominious tale of an obscure chimney sweep turned criminal. The link by which they came to be related would appear to be Captain Kidd. The ballad of Captain Kidd was certainly in full flower by the time Benbow's story swept the nation. Wishing to take advantage of the breeze, some ballad writer turned for a model to a current sea song-the ballad of "Captain Kidd"-and made a new ballad to the same tune and stanza pattern. A half-sheet of the early 18th century provides our earliest text, and the tune has been recovered by William Chappell:
Come all you sailors bold, Lend an ear, lend an ear,
Come all you sailors bold, lend an ear.
It's of our Admiral's fame,
Brave Benbow called by name,
How he fought on the main You shall hear, you shall hear,
How he fought on the main you shall hear.
Brave Benbow he set sail For to fight ...
Brave Benbow he set sail,
With a fine and pleasant gale,
But his Captains they turn'd tail In a fright...
Says Kirby unto Wade, "I will run...
"I value not disgrace,
Nor the losing of my place,
My enemies I'll not face With a gun...
'Twas the Ruby and Noah's Ark Fought the French...
And there was ten in all,
Poor souls they fought them all,
They valued them not at all, Nor their noise ...
It was our Admiral's lot With a chain shot ...
Our Admiral lost his legs,
And to his men he begs,
"Fight on, my boys," he says, "'Tis my lot..."
While the surgeon dress'd his wounds, Thus he said...
"Let my cradle now in haste
On the quarter-deckb e plac'd,
That my enemies I may face Till I'm dead..."
And there bold Benbow lay, Crying out ...
"Let us tack about once more,
We'll drive them to their own shore,
I value not half a score, Nor their noise... "[15]
This Benbow ballad is a good sturdy song, and we might expect it to serve as a model for other songs about naval figures. So it proves. At the time of the popular resentment against Admiral Byng over the loss of Minorca, in 1757, a song on the same pattern got started; first, doubtless, on broadsides, and later passing into tradition. It was current in Aberdeenshire at the opening of the 19th century, and was printed, finally, from old tradition, in Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, II (1881), 260-261, with four stanzas of text, as follows, under the name, "Admiral Byng and Brave West":
I said unto brave West, "Take the van, take the van,"
I said unto brave West, "Take the van."
I said unto brave West,
"As you love fighting best;
I in the rear will rest,
Take the van."
Brave West did boldly act in the van....
As he did boldly act,
I call'd my own ships back;
Else he'd put the French to wrack
Near Mahon.
Ohl woe to cursed gold lohon! ...
Ohl woe to cursed gold;
For Minorca I have sold,
That gallant place of old,
With Mahon!
It's decreed by the King, I do hear, I do hear,
He's decreed it the nation to please,
It's decreed by the King,
I'll be shot by my marines,
For the misdeed I have deen
On the seas.[16]
There appears to be a telescoping in the last stanza; and one may also assume a good deal of forgetful abridgment. Still later, the same pattern was employed for a song on the American hero, Paul Jones. It began, "You've all heard of Paul Jones, have you not? have you not?"[17] And again, after Nelson's victory at Copenhagen, a new adaptation appeared on the same plan. This song, called "The Battle of Copenhagen," contained twenty-seven stanzas, and was written early in 1805 by no less a poet than Thomas Campbell. It began as follows:
Of Nelson and the North
Sing the day,
When their haughty powers to vex
He engaged the Danish decks,
And with twenty floating wrecks
Crowned the fray."
Campbell was dissatisfied with his first effort and afterwards rewrote the song in a different meter. The improved version is still familiar, under the title of "The Battle of the Baltic."
All these, we may suppose, are offspring of the Admiral Benbow or the Captain Kidd ballad. The evidence from the tunes is scantier. Certainly, the 18th-century tune printed by Chappell for "Benbow," though perhaps related, shows little resemblance to Durfey's tune for "Chimney Sweep"; nor is it very close to the "Benbow" tune" collected recently by Sharp. The last named is as follows:
We know, however, that "Benbow" and "Jack Hall" were being sung to the same tune when Sharp was collecting in Somerset. And Captain Whall tells us that in his day (ca. 1875-?), at sea, "Benbow" was being sung to the tune of "Captain Kidd."[20] But he does not print the tune which he had heard. In fact, so far as I know, there are before 1920 only one or two printings of the words of "Captain Kidd" together with a tune.[21] These have been inaccessible to me. They are American, as are most of the printed texts of this ballad. Nevertheless, we need not give up hope of finding identifiable and early versions of the tune for "Captain Kidd." If we search the early hymnbooks of the "shaped note" kind, we shall find in some of them a hymn with a first stanza as follows:
Through all the world below
God is seen all around;
Search hills and valleys through,
There he's found.
The growing of the corn,
The lily and the thorn,
The pleasant and forlorn,
All declare God is there,
In the meadows drest in green
There he's seen.[22]
The title of this hymn is "Captain Kidd," and the name might conceivably have puzzled a good many pious singers to account for. The melody is as follows:
STANZA PATTERN
The text of the hymn of "Captain Kidd" takes us out of the proper subject matter which we have been following. But the stanza pattern is so distinctive and recognizable that we may reasonably infer relationships where it occurs. It remains to inquire whither and how far back this vehicle will carry us.
Beginning at our own end of things, we shall find, if we look about, a fair number of popular traditional songs on miscellaneous subjects written to this pattern. There is, for example, the well-known "Oh, the eagles they fly high In Mobile, in Mobile." In a recent collection of songs from Mississippi there is a fragment beginning, "Oh, I had an apple pie," which exists in fuller form in a version of 1844:
Oh, I had an apple pie,
Over there, over there.
Oh, I had an apple pie,
And the crust was made of rye,
And 'twas eat that or die,
Over there, over there.
Oh, the potatoes they grow tall,
Over there, over there.
Oh, the potatoes they grow tall,
And they plant them in the fall,
And they eat them tops and all,
Over there, over there.[23]
This song is evidently a variant of the Irish Famine song,
O the praties they are small
Over here, over here, etc.
Several English collections of our own century have traditional songs on the same pattern. One of the most widely disseminated is "Three maidens a milking did go," which was found by Frank Kidson in Yorkshire, by Cecil Sharp in Somerset, by Alfred Williams on the Thames.[24] This stem is itself fairly old, for it exists on mid-19th century broadsides.[25]
Incidentally, the tune preserved by Kidson can be seen in a variant form with the fairly common nonsense song, "I was born almost ten thousand years ago," in Carl Sandburg's American Song-Bag, pp. 33o-331, though here the stanza pattern has been obscured in the text.
Looking further among the popular hymns current in this country in the last century particularly, we can see how welcome the pattern was for pious uses. Walker's Southern Harmony, convenient for inspection because recently reprinted, yields other examples besides "Captain Kidd."
Thus, "Solemn Thought" contains words that might have been taken straight from a version of "Kidd" or "Jack Hall":
Remember, sinful youth, you must die, you must die,
Remember, sinful youth, you must die.
Remember, sinful youth,
Who hate the way of truth,
And in your pleasures boast, you must die, you must die,
And in your pleasures boast, you must die.[26]
Another example is "The Saints Bound for Heaven," beginning, "Our bondage it shall end by and by, by and by," etc.[27] Another is the beautiful "Wondrous Love":
What wondrous love is this, oh! my soul! oh! my soul!
What wondrous love is this, oh! my soul!
What wondrous love is this!
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.[28]
In the Old World the pattern had already been employed for religious purposes. A carol introduced by Thomas Hardy into Under the Greenwood Tree (Pt. I, chap. 4) makes use of the stanza. The carol is "Remember O thou Man"; it is still current in tradition, and was probably the pattern for "Remember, sinful youth." It was printed in early 19th century collections like Sandys's Christmas Carols, 1833; Bedford's Excellency of Divine Musick, 1733, carries it back another century; Forbes's A berdeen Cantus, 1662, three-quarters of a century further; and Ravenscroft's Melismata, 1611, another half century yet.[29]
Returning once more to the 19th century, and leaving the religious texts for the present, we can point to a Manx song, "Marrinys yn Tiger," the tune of which is a variant of "Benbow" as collected by Sharp.[30] Again, the Welsh have a song on the same stanzaic pattern, with a tune markedly reminiscent of Durfey's "Chimney Sweep," here called "The Vale of Clwyd."[31]
The Orkney Islanders had a song, very popular in the last century and current in many versions, but usually called "Germany Thomas." It was likely to commence somewhat as follows:
Oh, my luve's in Germany, Send him hame, send him hame,
Oh, my luve's in Germany, Send him hame.
Oh, my luve's in Germany,
Long leagues o' land and sea
Frae Westray and frae me-Send him hame.
The tune that goes with this song is, in the following version,[32] unquestionably a member of the same family as Durfey's:
The Jacobites, who, at least in Scotland, had a quick ear for a good tune, held this one dear. For it Robert Burns wrote his vigorous "Ye Jacobites by name," sent to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum in 1792 [33].
Another song, "Aikendrum," shows that the Jacobites had already appropriated the tune and stanza for upwards of half a century before Burns wrote. "Aikendrum" describes the situation immediately before the battle of Sheriffmuir, 1715. It commences:
Ken you how a Whig can fight, Aikendrum, Aikendrum?
Ken you how a Whig can can fight, Aikendrum?
He can fight, the hero bright,
With his heels and armour light,
And his wind of heav'nly might, Aikendrum, Aikendrum,
Is not Rowley in the right, Aikendrum? [34]
In variant forms, the tune of this was used with the "Paul Jones" ballad, about 1780;[35] it appears also above with Christie's version of "Admiral Byng"; and it has recently been used in the North of Scotland with "Barbara Allan."[36] An Orkney version of "Germany Thomas" was published in Col. D. Balfour's Ancient Orkney Melodies in 1885. There is also an Irish variant of the tune with the title of "They say my love is dead," in the Petrie Collection (No. 698) as collected from a fiddler and lacking the words.
Stenhouse declared, with that positiveness which belied his frequent errors, that "Germany Thomas" had been written by Hector Macniell, as Macniell himself had informed him; and also that it had been published on an Edinburgh single sheet as by a lady, upon the death of an officer in 1794. But the Orkney tradition held that it was written by a certain Colonel Traill, who was an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus-a tradition which, if credible, would move the song a full century further back, to about the year 1625.
At any rate, there is among the Thorn-Drury Broadsides at Harvard, with the MS. date of November 7, 1659, a ballad entitled "The Arraignment of the Divell for stealing away President Bradshaw." This song, directed to be sung to the tune of "Well-a-day, well-a-day," preserves the stanza pattern in question, and ends with a Tyburn conclusion relating it more closely to "Captain Kidd" and "Jack Hall." The last two stanzas:
(18) You must die out of hand,
Satanas, Satanas,
This our Decree shall stand,
without Controll,
And we for you will pray,
Becauset he Scripturess ay,
When some men curse you, they
curse their own soul.
(19) The Fiend to Tiburn's gone,
There to die, there to die,
Black is the North anon,
great storms will be:
Therefore together now
I leave him and th' Gallow:
So Newes-man take 'em thou,
Soon they'l take thee.[37]
Here we appear to have an ancestor, but not an original, for our 18thcentury hanging ballads. The communistic group of Social Levellers, known as "Diggers," led by Winstanley, 1649-1652, already had a song on the same pattern, called "Stand up now, Diggers All." The words of it may have been written by Winstanley himself. It contained the following lines:
The gentry are all round, stand up now, stand up now,
The gentry are all round, stand up now.
The gentry are all round, on each side they are found,
Their wisdom's so profound, to cheat us of our ground,
Stand up now, stand up now.
The clergy they come in, stand up now,...
The clergy they come in, and say it is a sin,
That we should now begin, our freedom for to win,
Stand up now, Diggers all.
To conquer them by love, come in now, ...
To conquer them by love, as it does you behove,
For He is King above; no power like to love.
Glory here, Diggers all.[38]
Among the Pepys Broadsides (Vol. I, fol. ii i) is a ballad on the death of Sir Walter Raleigh, October 29, 1618, which is directed to be sung to the same tune as was "The Arraignment of the Divell," namely, "Welladay." This song, besides being a still earlier example of the dying confessions type, preserves the same general pattern. It commences:
Courteous kind Gallants all, pittie me, pittie me,
My time is now but small,
here to continue:
Thousands of people stay,
To see my dying day,
Sing I then welladay,
wofully mourning.[39]
The slight variation in the stanza here brings the song closer in form to the religious branch perpetuated by "Remember O thou Man" than to the more familiar secular variants.The tune of "Well-a-day"was a familiar tune in Shakespeare's time, much employed for songs of this kind, and elsewhere called "Essex's Last Good-Night."[40]
We can carry the pattern still further back. In Edinburgh, in 1567, appeared that very curious book called "Ane Compendius Buik of Godly and Spirituall Sangis Collectit out of sundrye partes of the Scripture, with sundrye uther Ballatis changeit out of prophaine sangis in godly sangis for avoyding of sin and harlatry, with augmentation of syndrye gude and godly ballatis." The primary object of this work was to religify secular folk songs by substituting for the sinful words of love and merriment new pious words, keeping the patterns so that the same tunes could be used, because "the Devil had all the good tunes." The "Gude and Godly Ballatis" contains the pattern we have been pursuing:
All my lufe, leif me not,
Leif me not, leif me not,
All my lufe, leif me not,
This myne allone:
With ane burding on my bak,
I may not beir it, I am sa waik;
Lufe, this burding fra me tak,
Or ellis I am gone.[41]
One further step into the dark backward and abysm of time remains to be taken. In the quaint book entitled The Complaynt of Scotlande, published about 1549, mention is made of a song beginning,
My lufe is lyand seik, send hym ioy, send hym ioy.[42]
Here we reach the very sea mark of our utmost sail, as, so far as I have perused earlier collections, the pattern we have followed does not appear in them. Where it had its beginning therefore remains a mystery; but at times the stanzaic experiments of the earlier carol writers approach it, and we may perhaps assume, pending further light, that our wayward ballad of "Samuel Hall," thoroughly acclimated now in California, took its rise ultimately in the bosom of the Church, in England, at some time in the later Middle Ages.
Errata
p. 2, 1. 4 of text-"thenology" should be "ethnology."
p. 7-author's name, Sidney Robertson Cowell, omitted.
p. 47-score for "Samuel Hall" lyric is on page 61.
p. 6 x-score for lyric given here, on page 47.
---------------------
Footnotes:
1. Without doubt, the "hide" of the refrain in this version is a bit of college slang, unconsciously substituted for an earlier "eyes," which had come to seem antiquated to the singers.
2. Lomax, 1934, p. 133; Musicraft Record no. 207-A, Album no. i1: "Gallows Song."
3. Harold Scott, 1926, pp. 84-85
4. William Hayes, Selected Songs Sung at Harvard College (Cambridge, 1866), pp. 58-59. The tune is not given.
5. Sabine Baring-Gould Collection of Broadsides, British Museum, L. R. 271. a. 2, Vol. IX, fol. 225.
6. Cf. the note contributed by Kidson, in Sharp's Folk Songs from Somerset, 4th series (London, 1908), p. 77.
7. C. J. Sharp, Folk Songs from Somerset, 4th series (London, 1908), p. 20; also One Hundred English Folk Songs, 1916, p. 182.
8. Cf. the note cited in footnote 6, above.
9. Pills (1720), VI, 251.
10 Hayes, pp. 16-18.
11. Mackenzie, 1928, pp. 278 ff., with many other references.
12. Though this version was taken down from singing, the tune is not given.
13. W. B. Whall, Sea Songs and Shanties, 6th ed., 1927, p. xi; J. Masefield, A Sailor's Garland, ed. of 1928, p. xviii. For other versions, with tunes, cf. Gardner and Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, 1939, p. 318; J. Colcord, Roll and Go, 1924, p. 69, and Songs of American Sailormen, 1938, p. 141; E. H. Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England, 1939, p. 131. There was even a Captain Kidd's Songster, n.d.
14. An exemplar, perhaps unique, is in the Crawford Collection. It is reprinted in C. H. Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads, 1908, p. 134-137. The tune is not known, but its title suggests the last phrase of Sharp's version of Jack Hall.
15. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, original edition, pp. 678-679.
16. W. Christie, II (1881), 260-261, with the tune.
17. Cf. G. F. Graham, Songs of Scotland, 1849, I, 28-29.
18. Cf. Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, Oxford edition, pp. 192 ff.; Firth, Naval Songs and Ballads, 1908, pp. 290 ff.
19. Folk Songs from Somerset, 3d series, 190o6, p. 51; One Hundred English Folk Songs, 1916, p. 200.
20. Whall, Sea Songs and Shanties, ed. of 1927, p. 81.
21 Of. Mackenzie's Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia, pp. 278-279, for references.
22. William Walker, Southern Harmony, 1835,e t an. seq., reprinted as a W.P.A. publication (Hastings House, New York, 1939), p. 50.
23 A. P. Hudson, Folk-Songs of Mississippi, 1933, pp. 216-217. The earlier version was published by Atwill, New York, 1844, four stanzas with music. Cf. also Howe, 200 Comic Songs, p. 31; Spaeth, Read 'em and Weep, 1926, pp. 33-34.
24 Kidson, Traditional Tunes, 1891, p. 73; Sharp MSS., Clare College, Cambridge, fols. 1207, 1476; Williams, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923, P. 229.
25. E.g., S. Baring-Gould Collection, British Museum, L.R. 271. a. 2, Vol. III, fol. 29 (a Newcastle broadside printed by Williamson).
26. Walker, p. 29.
27. Walker, p. 258.
28. Walker, p. 252
29. Cf. Journal of the English Folk Song Society, passim, and Oxford Book of Carols, No. 42.
30 W. H. Gill, Manx National Song-Book, 1896, p. 4.
31. C. V. Stanford, National Song Book, 1906, Welsh Songs, p. 240. The tune is separately named "The Missing Boat."
32. Moffat, Minstrelsy of Scotland, 2d ed., 1896, p. 115.
33. Vol. IV, No. 371. Cf. also J. C. Dick, Songs of Burns, pp. 264, 464.
34. J. Hogg, Jacobite Relics, 2d series, 1821, pp. 22 ff.
35. Cf. Stenhouse, Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland, 1853, p. 343.
36 Cf. G. Greig and A. Keith, Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads, 1925, P. 70, tune 2.
37. The ballad was reprinted in full in C. Mackay, The Songs and Ballads of the Cavaliers, 1864, pp. 124' ff
38 G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 19o4, pp. 282-283, with other refs.
39 Cf. H. E. Rollins, A Pepysian Garland, 1922, pp. 89 ff.
40 A version of it was printed in Chappell's Popular Music, I, 176.
41. Op. cit., ed. A. F. Mitchell, Scottish Text Society, 1897, p. 220. Cf. also A. G. Gilchrist, "Sacred Parodies of Secular Folk Songs," in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. III, No. 3, Dec. 1938.
42. Op. cit., ed. J. A. H. Murray, Early English Text Society, 1872, p. 65.