The Hangman's Tree- Smith (WV) 1903 Kittredge; Smith A
[No informant named. From Two Popular Ballads by G. L. Kittredge; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 21, No. 80 (Jan. - Mar., 1908), pp. 54-56. His notes follow. Also Smith A, South Carolina Ballads, 1928, "The Hangman's Tree." Notes: Communicated by Reed Smith, who heard the ballad in West Virginia in the summer of 1902. He was working with a surveyor's crew ten miles from the railroad in the mountains. One night, he heard one of the axemen singing a peculiar minor air. This man could neither read nor write and had lived in McDowell county all his life. As minors always have a strange fascination for amateur musicians, the young surveyor hummed the tune over several times till he learned it. It look no special effort to remember the words; they practically "learned themselves." Several years later, he found that this song, picked up so casually and accidentally in West Virginia, is an excellent American variant of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows."
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
The following version of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" (Child, No. 95) was communicated May 23, 1905, by Mr. Reed Smith, of Columbia, South Carolina, as learned in August, 1903, at Jager, West Virginia, from a mountaineer who could neither read nor write. It is almost identical with the version printed in Child, v, 296 ("The Hangman's Tree"); cf. also version B (Child, ii, 351). See the Introduction to the one-volume collection of Ballads, in the "Cambridge Poets," pp. xxv, xxvi.
[THE HANGMAN'S TREE]
1. "Slack your rope, hangsman,
And slack it for awhile;
I think I see my brother coming,
Riding many a mile.
2. "O brother, have you brought me gold?
Or have you paid my fee ?
Or have you come to see me hanging
On the gallows tree ?"
3. "I've neither brought you gold;
I've neither paid your fee;
But I have come to see you hanging
On the gallows tree."
(So on with the whole family, - sister, father, mother, etc., ad infinitum.)
4. "Slack your rope, hangsman,
And slack it for awhile;
I think I see my true-love coming,
Riding many a mile.
5. "O true-love, have you brought me gold?
Or have you paid my fee?
Or have you come to see me hanging
On the gallows tree ?"
6. "Yes, I have brought you gold;
Yes, I have paid your fee;
Nor have I come to see you hanging
On the gallows tree."