Six King’s Daughters- Cleverdon (NS) 1918 Greenlief- C
[My title. From: Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland; Collected and edited by Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf and recorded by Grace Yarrow Mansfield, 1933.
R. Matteson 2014]
Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf first visited Newfoundland in 1920 as a summer volunteer teacher for one of the Grenfell mission schools. As she recalls, someone in the family with whom she was staying offered to sing her a song, and "I listened without particular interest, until it suddenly dawned upon me that he was singing a real folk-song, one handed down by oral tradition" (xix). At Vassar College she had listened to ballads sung by the Fuller sisters and had heard lectures on the subject by John Lomax; now she recognized that this was a special experience. "From that night ... I spent my leisure time listening to the songs and writing them down. No pupil of mine worked harder learning to write than I to record the tunes they sang"(xix).
[Six King’s Daughters]- Mrs. Robert Cleverdon from New York City (1918), learned in Nova Scotia.
1. "Take off, take off your gay clothing,
And hang it on a tree.
For six king's daughters I've drownded here,
And the seventh you shall be."
2. Then turn your head, you false villain,
Then turn your head from me,
For t'would be a sin, such a false-hearted villain,
A naked woman to see.
3. He turned his head all around about,
His eyes to the willow tree,
She cast her arms about his body,
And threw him in the sea.
4. "lie there, lie there, thou false-hearted villain,
Lie there, instead of me;
Six king's daughters thou'st drowned here,
But the seventh hath drownded thee."
. . .
5. "Well done, well done, my pretty little poll parrot!
Thou'st told no news of me,
And your cage shall be made of the fine beaten gold,
And locked with an ivory key."