The House Carpenter- Devlin (NY) c.1875 REC Lomax
[From: "Never without a song: the years and songs of Jennie Devlin, 1865-1952" by Katharine D. Newman (1995, University of Illinois Press, foward by Alan Lomax). Though this book was published in 1995, the germination of its creation started with recordings made by Lomax and the author in 1936-1938.
Jennie Devlin was born in 1865 in upstate New York, rejected by her mother, and by age 5 was "bound out" as an indentured servant working for her keep; at age 14 she began working for wages. She spent several years with a family of itinerant basket-makers and fiddlers who traveled throughout the northeastern states and into southern Canada, where she started building her repertoire of songs. (see review by Gloria Eive in MELUS Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring, 1996) She later lived in Philadelphia and Gloucester, New Jersey.
R. Matteson 2013]
The House Carpenter- as sung by Jeannie Devlin (NY) c.1875; Recording by Lomax 1936. Devlin knew the ballad when, "I was only a kid." Jennie Devlin's version is a fragment, and with the singer insisting that the woman returned to her child.
"Well met, well met, O my own true love,
Well met, well met, O," cries she.
"I've come across the deep blue sea,
And it's all for o'er the love of thee."
"If I am to give up my house carpenter,
And also my little baby,
What have you got to support me upon,
On the banks of the old Tennessee?"
"I have six ships a-sailing the sea,
And one hundred and ten
Of your own countrymen
For to be at your command."
[So she goes with him] -- states the singer
She picks up her dear little baby,
And kisses it one, two, and three,
Saying "Stay at home with your daddy,
While I go sailing on the sea."