The Brown Girl- Williamson (VA) 1915 Davis DD
[From Davis; More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1960. Davis notes follow. Davis mentions this was collected in 1915, but it is not found in TBVa, 1929- I'm not sure there is an earlier collection from this informant that was published.
R. Matteson 2014]
LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET
(Child, No. 73)
The TBVa headnote points out the kinship between this ballad and the two that immediately follow, "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" and "Lord Lovel," and attempts to distinguish the pure types of the three from the blended texts. All are love tragedies. But in "Lord Thomas" there is a triangle with three violent deaths; in "Fair Margaret" there is a triangle, with two lovers' deaths, neither violent; in "Lord Lovel" the triangle disappears, the lover is not unfaithful, only laggard, returns to find his lady dead of love too long deferred, then himself dies of grief. The "rose-and-brier" ending is often, but not always, attached to all three, more regularly to the two ballads that follow than to this ballad.
The ballad of Lord Thomas plus his variously named sweetheart (generally some form of Eleanor) and her brown-girl rival (sometimes Sally Brown) is one of the more popular ballads still found in tradition in America. Coffin's American bibliography is extensive. TBVa printed seventeen texts and omitted seventeen more. FSVa lists thirteen items subsequently collected in Virginia, four of them phonographic recordings. Of the thirteen, only six are here presented. Five of the six have tunes.
The new Virginia texts are most closely related to Child D and with one possible exception to be noted, follow the English rather than the Scottish form of the ballad. All, with variations, follow Coffin's Story Type A, not the extraordinary Type B (if the latter deserves the name of a distinct story type of this ballad). As usual, it is with a pang that many excellent texts with some distinctive readings have been omitted. One of the discarded texts has this distinctive stanza, somewhat reminiscent of the several Scottish texts in Child:
The brown girl she come stepping up,
Her heart was filled with hate.
“where did you get your well water
That washed your skin so white?"
Another has and the singer insisted upon the readings "riddler's boat" for "riddle us both," "merriments" for "merry men's," and the following unique last stanza:
Lord Thomas he commenced cussin' and swearin'
An' walkin' across the hall.
Then he cut off the brown girl's head
And kicked it against the wall.
Another has this variant stanza:
Lord Thomas called his merry men round,
He dressed them all in white,
So that every city he passed through
They took him to be some knight.
Still another has Lord Thomas reply to Fair Ellen's taunts about the brown girl with, "Throw not your slurs at me, Fair Ellen." And so on. But in the main these discarded versions follow the same story line without too significant variation, except, perhaps, in the eyes of the connoisseur of such variants. The six texts and five tunes that follow, plus the above notes, will adequately represent the ballad and its variants here. Child prints nine versions of the ballad and finds room in his Additions and Corrections (III, 509-10) for a variant of his D version "from the singing of a Virginia nurse-maid (helped out by her mother)" communicated by W. H. Babcock to the Folk-Lore Journal (VII, 33, 1889). This, like most of the American texts, stems from any one of several seventeenth-century broadside collections (Pepys, Roxburghe, Bagford, and others). Most of the numerous survivals in recent British tradition stem from the same broadside sources. In America, the ballad rivals in popularity "Barbara Allan" and "The House Carpenter." Sharp-Karpeles print an astonishing thirty-one tunes with texts or part-texts ( I, 115-31). The Brown Collection prints or comments upon fourteen (II, 69-79), the first from Rockingham County, Virginia. Excellent as the ballad is, it has perhaps less critical and scholarly interest because of its close relationship to broadsides and songbooks (see Barry, p. 134).
DD. "The Brown Girl." Collected by Miss Juliet Fauntleroy, of Altavista, Va. Sung by Mrs. Kit Williamson. First verse and tune collected March 15, 1934, from Mrs. Williamson, then of Yellow Branch, Va.; other stanzas collected March 20, 1915, from Mrs. Williamson (then Mrs. James Sprouse), then of Lawyers, Va. Campbell County. Tune noted by Mrs. Paul Cheatham, of Lynchburg, Va. A good full text not included in TBVa and now complete with tune.
1. "Oh Mother, oh Mother, oh Mother," said he,
"Come and riddle us both as one,
Whether I must bring fair Ellender home,
Or bring the brown girl in."
2. "The brown girl has both house and lands,
Fair Ellender she has none.
I would advise you as my best son
To bring the brown girl home."
3. He rode and he rode till he came to the hall,
He rattled the bell and it rang.
None was more ready than fair Ellender herself
To arise and let him in.
4. "What news, what news, Lord Thomas," she cried,
"What news do you bring to me ?"
"I've come to invite you to my wedding day,
And is that good news to you ?"
5. "Bad news, bad news, Lord Thomas," she cried,
"Bad news do you bring to me.
I thought that I was to be the bride
And you the bridegroom be.”
6. Oh Mother, oh Mother, come riddle these sports,
Come riddle them all as one,
Whether I shall go to Lord Thomas's wedding
Or tarry at home with You."
7 "Ten thousand, of your friends will be there,
Ten thousand of Your foes,
Therefore I advise you as my best daughter
To tarry with me at home."
8 She went and dressed herself in white,
Her wait-men all in green,
And every town that she passed through,
She was taken to be a queen.
9. She rode and she rode till she came to the hall,
She rattled the bell and it rang,
None was more ready than Lord Thomas himself
To arise and let her in.
10. He took her by her lily-white hand
And led her across the hall,
And seated her in a bright arm chair
Among the ladies all.
11. "Is that your bride, Lord Thomas?" said she,
"She is most wonderful brown,
You once could have married as fair-skinned a girl
As ever the sun shined on."
12 The brown girl she had a sharp penknife,
It was both keen and sharp;
Right between fair Ellender's ribs and light
She pierced it in her heart.
13 "Fair Ellender, fair Ellender," said he,
"What makes You look so pale?"
"Oh, don't you see my own heart's blood
Run trickling down by me?"
14 Lord Thomas had a sword that hung
In the hall against the wall.
He took it down and cut her head off
And kicked it against the wall.
15 "Mother, oh mother, go dig my grave,
Go dig it both wide and deep,
And bury fair Ellender in my arms
And the brown girl at my feet."
16 He put the sword against the wall,
The point against his heart,
Were never three lovers that ever met
More sooner they did depart.
Alternate Conclusion:
Here goes the life of these true loves,
God take them home to rest.