The Dewy Dales of Yarrow- Mitchell (NL) 1930
[From: Folk Songs from Newfoundland; Karpeles, 1934. Following is an excerpt from: Song Collecting in Newfoundland: Maud Karpeles (date is 1930).
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
Maud soon decided that it was time to move on, and that meant going across Placentia Bay to the Burin Peninsula. She stayed on the Burin peninsula for the best part of a week, visiting such communities as Marystown, Beau Bois, Salmonier, Frenchman’s Cove and Garnish. Her informants in this area were mainly descendants of English settlers from Dorset and Devon, and so even when the songs she obtained were variants on those collected the previous year they often differed significantly from the Irish ver-sions. She began collecting in Marystown by taking the ferry to the south side of the inlet and calling on people suggested by her landlady, Mrs. Farrell. She only found one singer (May Mitchell) who offered the kind of songs she wanted but, as this comment in her diary indicates, she noticed a marked difference in attitude between Marystown residents and people on the Avalon Peninsula:
Everyone friendly and willing to sing, but only Mrs. Mitchell any good. She gave me some nice songs. Got a man to row us back…He had no doubt I was making lots of money over the songs. He is the first person to make this re-mark. The people on this coast very different from East Coast. Do not show curiosity – much more friendly at first sight and require little or no persuasion to sing. They are an-xious to oblige a stranger and are quite regret-ful when they have not any songs. I hope you will succeed is the unfailing remark as you leave them. The interest in songs is much more widespread than on the East Coast but not such fine songs about. Here, as everywhere, the proportion of genuine folk songs is very small compared to the repertory of composed songs.
May Mitchell sang one ballad that Maud had not previously found in Newfoundland, “The Dewy Dales of Yarrow.”
The Dewy Dales of Yarrow- Sung by May Joseph Mitchell of Marystown, Placentia Bay NL on July 10, 1930; from Karpeles, Folk Songs from Newfoundland, 95-96.
There was a squire lived in the town,
He had one daughter Sarah.
She admired her father’s clerk,
The ploughboy John from Yarrow.
As he was going up the lane,
The lane so very narrow,
And there he spied nine hired men
Waiting for his carrow.
Three he drew and three he slew
And three he had slightly wounded,
And her brother John stepped up behind
To pierce him bodily under.
“Go home, go home, you false young man,
And tell your sister Sarah,
That the prettiest flower that bloomed in June
Is the man who died in Yarrow.”
She said: “Brother dear, I had a dream,
I dreamed I was gathering flowers,
I dreamed I was gathering flowers
In the dewy dales of Yarrow.”
“Sister dear, I can read your dream
That caused you in fear to sorrow.
The sweetest flower that bloomed in June
Is the man who died in Yarrow.”
Her father said to her one day:
“What caused you in grief to sorrow?”
She threw herself in her father’s arms
And she never saw tomorrow.