The Golden Willow Tree- Wilson (NC) 1930 Henry B
[From: Folk Songs from the Southern Highlands by Mellinger Edward Henry, 1933; Henry was a friend and associate of my grandfather, Maurice Matteson, and they collaborated on one book together, Beech Mountain Ballads. Like Horton Barker's well known version learned in Tennessee, the ships are reversed.
R Matteson 2014]
THE SWEET TRINITY (THE GOLDEN VANITY) (Child, No. 286)
For American texts, see Barry, No. 1; Belden, No. 78; Campbell and Sharp, No. 3 5; Colcord, p. 79; Cox, No. 32; Davis, No. 47; Barry-Eckstorm-Smyth, p. 339; Hudson, No. 22; Journal, XVIII, 125 (Barry); XXIII, 429 (Belden); XXX, 331 (Kittredge); McGill, p. 97; Pound, Ballads, No. 10; Shearin and Combs, p. 9; Shoemaker, p. 126 (Second Ed.); Wyman and Brockway, p. 72. Cf. the English version with music in Sharp's One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 14. Cox points out that "A fragment of this ballad, combined with an additional stanza of a comic character, has been popular as a college song" and supplies the following references: "Waite, Cartnina Collegensia (Boston, Cop. 1868), p. 171; The American College Songster (Ann Arbor, 1876), p. 101; White, Student Life in Song (Boston, Cop. 1879), p. 58." A fine text of the original ballad with the tune will be found in J. W. Raine's, The Land of the Saddle-Bags, p. 121. For a modern version of "The Golden Vanity", see John Masefield's A Sailor's Garland, p. 175. Add Flanders and Brown, p. 230; Randolph, p. 177; Brown, p. 9; Bulletin, No. 5, pp. 10—11.
B. "The Golden Willow Tree." Recorded by Mrs. Henry from the singing of Mrs. Ewart Wilson, Pensacola, North Carolina, August 1, 1930. "The Long Brown Path" in The New York Evening Post (p. 7) for August 22, 1930, has the following account: "Our unique experience came last Thursday when we sought out "Big Tom" Wilson's place on Cane River at the western base of Mount Mitchell. The road will not appear on the maps. Finding no one at home, we drove four miles to Ewart Wilson's, "Big Tom's" grandson. The wife of Ewart Wilson is one of the brightest, keenest and best educated women we have ever found in the mountains. We soon got her interested in singing and ended with a bag of more than a dozen songs, three of them traditional ballads of the rarest kind." For the story of "Big Tom" Wilson, the great hunter of the Black Mountains and the man who led the search for Professor Mitchell at the time that he lost his life while taking observation on the mountains, see "The Saga of the Carolina Hills" by Hodge Mathes in The Christian Observer, July 9, 1930. Also see "Ewart Wilson's Road — Building Feat Astounds. Remarkable Mountaineer Tells of Father's Unique Career" by Ida Briggs Henderson in The Sunday Citizen, Asheville, N. C, July 20, 1930. The father's name is Adolph ("Dolph") and he and his wife still maintain a mountain inn at Pensacola, N. C. "Dolph" came to his son's home during the course of the evening and gave interesting information about the mountain people. Mrs. Ewart Wilson remembers her mother's singing this song when she was a child. She says that she is sure that the ship that was sent to the bottom was the Golden Willow Tree and not the Turkey Revelee because she remembers as a child feeling sad that a ship with so pretty a name as Golden Willow Tree had to be sunk.
1. There was a ship a-sailing the sea,
That went by the name of the Turkey Revelee,
As it sailed on the low and the lonesome below,
As it sailed on the lonesome sea.
2. They hadn't been sailing but two weeks or three
Till they were overtaken by the Golden Willow Tree,
As it sailed on the low and the lonesome below,
As it sailed on the lonesome sea.
3. "I have houses, I have land
And I have a daughter at your command,
If you'll sink her in the low and the lonesome below,
If you'll sink her in the lonesome sea."
4. He turned on his breast and swimming went he
Till he came up to the Golden Willow Tree,
And he sank them in the low and the lonesome below,
And he sank them in the lonesome sea.
(Two stanza 5 and 6, could not be recalled but Mrs. Wilson remembers that when the sailor returned, he was refused his reward).
7. He turned on his back and sinking went he,
Bidding farewell to the Turkey Revelee,
As he sank in the low and the lonesome below,
As he sank in the lonesome sea.