Seven Brothers- Grogan (NC) c1875 Brown C
[From the Brown Collection; 1952, one of 11 Versions. Includes music from Greer and Abrams housed at Appalachian State University- available online (some recordings).
Thomas Smith of Zionville, NC, moved to Virginia and was an informant/collector with his brother (and family) for Davis (More Traditional Ballads) in the 1930s. Some of the dates he provides may be exaggerated- I'll accept the "40 years ago" as accurate.
R. Matteson 2011, 2014]
3. Earl Brand (Child 7)
This admirable specimen of the tragic ballad seems to have held its place in the favor of ballad singers better in America than in the old country. Greig reports it from Scotland, to be sure, both in the Folk-Songs of the North-East and in Last Leaves, and Ord has it in his Bothy Songs; but the absence of any mention of it in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society seems to show that it is extinct in English tradition. On this side of the Atlantic it has been reported as traditional song in Newfoundland (BSSN 7-8), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 9-11), Maine (BBM 35-40), Virginia (TBV 86-91, SharpK I 21-3, 25), West Virginia (FSS 18-19), Kentucky (SharpK i 24-5), Tennessee (FSSH 36-7, BTFLS viii 64-5), North Carolina (JAFL xxviii 152-4, SharpK 1 14-19, SSSA 45-6, BMFSB lo-ii, SCSM 115-16), Georgia (SharpK I 19-20), Mississippi (FSM 66-8), Florida (SFLQ viii 136-8), the Ozarks (OMF 219-21, OFS I 48-9), Indiana (BSI 37-8), and Illinois JAFL IX 241-2). 'The Soldier's Wooing,' reckoned by some as a secondary form of "Earl Brand,' is dealt with later in the present volume. The American texts follow in general the tradition of Scott's form of the ballad ('The Douglas Tragedy' of the Minstrelsy, Child's version B), clinging in particular to the '"buglet horn" that "hung down by his side," recognizable through a variety of transformations. Old Carl Hood has vanished entirely. Most of the North Carolina versions, and also that from Georgia, have introduced a new element, the question of the hero's origin. *When scornfully described by the girl's father as "a steward's son" (transformed in texts A, C, F below into "Stuart's son"), he proudly declares that his father is a regis king and his mother a Quaker's queen. Possibly this has been picked up, and corrupted, from the English stall ballad of 'The Orphan Gypsy Girl,' the opening line of which in Cox's West Virginia version (FSS 335) runs: "My father is king of the gypsies, my mother is queen of the Jews."
C. 'Seven Brothers.' Contributed by Thomas Smith of Zionville, Watauga county, "just as sung by Miss Julia Grogan, March 17, 1915. She heard it over 40 years ago." Stanza 9 seems to be peculiar to the southern Appalachians; it appears, sometimes confused, in the Georgia text and in two of those from North Carolina in the Sharp-Karpeles collection. In the Mississippi text it is the woman who repents:
I wish myself in old Ireland
And you in the middle of the sea.
[This is a dialogue between the lovers. She answers in line 3.]
1 He rode up by the old man's gate
And boldly he did say:
'Your oldest daughter you can keep at home
But the youngest one I'll take away.'
2 'Come in, come in, all seven of my sons.
And bring your sister down;
For I never intend to have it said
Stuart's son took my daughter off.'
3 'I thank you, sir, this is very kind.
I'm none of the Stuart's sons.
My father's a rich old king,
My mother she's a queen.'
4 He mounted on a milk-white steed
And her on a dapple grey.
He swung his bugle horn around his neck
And blowed as he rode away.
5 He had not got more'n a mile from town
Till he, looking back again,
He saw her father and seven of her brothers
Come tripping over the plain.
6 'Light you down, fair Ellen,' said he,
'And hold my steed by the rein
Till I fight your father and seven of your brothers
That's tripping over the plain.'
7 She got down and stood right still
And never turned a word.
Till she saw her father and seven of her brothers
Wallowing in their own heart's blood.
8 'Slack your hand, Willie,' said she;
'Your wounds are very sore.
The blood flows free from every vein.
But a father I can have no more.'
9 'If you don't like what I have done
You may like some other one.
For I wish you was in your father's chamber
And I in some house or at home.'
10 He mounted on his milk-white steed
And her on the dapple grey.
He swung his bugle horn around his neck
And went bleeding away.
11 He rode till he came to his mother's gate
And tangled at the ring.
Saying, 'Mother, are you asleep or awake?
Rise and let me come in.'
12 He went into his sister's room.
Where he had often been before.
Saying, 'Sister, bind my head for me,
For it you'll bind no more.'
13 Sweet William died betwixt that and midnight;
The fowls had begun to crow.
Sweet William died from the wounds he received,
Fair Ellen died from sorrow.