The Golden Ball- Anderson (NY) 1916 Kittredge JAF
[From Kittredge; JAF, 1917; his notes follow. This is an important version of the "Golden Ball" versions and is quoted by Coffin.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS (Child, No. 95).
The first American copy to be printed was published by Child (5 :296), - "The Hangman's Tree," from Virginia by way of North Carolina. Others have appeared in JAFL 21 : 56 (West Virginia, Reed Smith); 26 : 175 (from an Irish servant in Massachusetts); 127 : 64 (South Carolina, Reed Smith); and Miss Wyman and Mr. Brockway have included still another (with the music) in their "Lonesome Tunes," I : 44-48 ("The Hangman's Tree," from Harlan County, Kentucky). See also Reed Smith (JAFL 27 : 59-63; 28 : 200-202); F. C. Brown, p. 9; Cox, 46 :359 (JAFL 29 : 400). For England see Broadwood and Fuller Maitland, "English County Songs," pp. 112- 113 ("The Prickly Bush"); Sharp, "Folk Songs from Somerset," 5: 54-55 ("The Briery Bush"); Sharp, "One Hundred English Folksongs," No. 17, pp. xxiv-xxv, 42-43; "Journal of the Folk-Song Society," 2 : 233-234; 5 : 228-239.
Professor C. Alphonso Smith reports several Virginia variants, with specimens, and gives an extremely interesting account of the performance of the piece among the negroes of Albemarle County as "an out-of-door drama" some twenty-five years ago.[2] An account of a similar performance in England may be found in the "Journal of the Folk-Song Society," 5 : 233-334.? Compare the first version printed below. Professor Smith also reports a variant from Tennessee ("Summer School News," July 31, 1914 (I : I, No. 12, Summer School of the South).
1 Barry prints a tune from Ireland in JAFL 24: 337 (Hudson MS., Boston Public Library, No. 121).
2 Ballads Surviving in the United States, reprinted from the January, 1916, Musical Quarterly, pp. 10-12. See also the Bulletin of the Virginia Folk-Lore Society, No. 2, p. 5; No. 3, p. 8; No. 4, P. 7; No. 5, p. 8. 3 Here reference is made to Mary A. Owen's Voodoo Tales (published in England under the title of Old Rabbit the Voodoo), New York, 1893, pp. 185-189, especially pp. 188-189 (also in Philadelphia ed., 1898, Old Rabbit's Plantation Stories, same pages).
1. [The Golden Ball.] Child's version F is a fragment which "had become a children's game, the last stage of many old ballads" (2 :346). This appears to be the case also with the text now printed, in which the lost object is a golden ball, as in the tale that embodies Child's version H. What precedes the first and second stanzas appears to be a prose dialogue introductory to the ballad, and accompanied by action. The text was communicated by Mr. John R. Reinhard, who procured it from one of his pupils in Mount Holyoke College, Miss Mary F. Anderson. Miss Anderson heard it in New York in the summer of 1916, from children among whom she was doing "settlement work."
"Father, father, may I have my golden ball?"
"No, you may not have your golden ball."
"But all the other girls and boys have their golden balls."
"Then you may have your golden ball; but if you lose your golden ball, you will hang on yonder rusty gallery[1].
"Father, father, I have lost my golden ball!"
"Well, then you will hang on yonder rusty gallery."
1. "Captain, captain, hold the rope;
I hear my mother's voice.
Mother, have you come to set me free,
Or have you come to see me hang
On yonder rusty gallery[1]?"
"No, I have come to see you hang
On yonder rusty gallery."
2. "Captain, captain, hold the rope;
I hear my sister's voice.
Sister, have you come to set me free,
Or have you come to see me hang
On yonder rusty gallery?"
"No, I have come to see you hang
On yonder rusty gallery."
3. "Captain, captain, hold the rope;
I hear my baby's voice.
Baby, have you come to set me free,
Or have you come to see me hang
On yonder rusty gallery?"
"Da, da." [Gives him the ball.]
The last stanza varies with the following: -
"Captain, captain, hold the rope;
I hear my sweetheart's voice.
Sweetheart, have you come to set me free,
Or have you come to see me hang
On yonder rusty gallery?"
"Yes, I have brought your golden ball,
And come to set you free;
I have not come to see you hanged
On yonder rusty gallery."
1. gallow-tree