The Golden Willow Tree- Peck (WV) 1916 Cox C
[From Cox; Folk-Songs of the South- 1925. This dates back two generations- many years before 1916.]
32. THE SWEET TRINITY (THE GOLDEN VANITY) (Child, No. 286)
This ballad is known in West Virginia as "The Green Willow Tree" and "The Golden Willow Tree." Two variants of the former have been found, practically identical, with the exception that the second has been localized in "North America." A single stanza only under the second title has been recovered. They are very similar to Child C. A and C were reported by Cox, xlv, 160 (Journal, xxix, 400).
For American texts see Journal, xviii, 125 (Barry; Vermont); xxiii, 429 (Belden; Missouri); xxx, 331 (Kittredge, from Belden; Missouri); Focus, tv, 158 (Virginia); Wyman and Brockway, p. 72 (Kentucky); McGill, p. 96 (Kentucky); Shoemaker, p. in (Pennsylvania); Campbell and Sharp, No. 35 (North Carolina) ; Pound, No. 10 (Nebraska); Minish MS. (North Carolina);
Singer's Journal, 11, 686. For references see Journal, xxx, 330. Add Bulletin, Nos. 8-10. A fragment of the ballad, combined with an additional stanza of a comic character, has been popular as a college song: Waite, Carmina Colligensia (Boston, cop. 1868), p. 171; The American College Songster (Ann Arbor, 1876), p. 101; White, Student Life in Song (Boston, cop. 1879), p. 58.
C. "The Golden Willow Tree." Communicated by Mrs. Elizabeth Tapp Peck, Morgantown, Monongalia County, March, 1916; obtained from her mother, Mrs. Thomas H. Tapp, who learned it from her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Wade Mack, who formerly lived near Easton.
There is a ship in the North Countree,
And she goes by the name of the Golden Willow Tree,
And she lieth in the Lowlands low, low, low,
And she lieth in the Lowlands low.