The House Carpenter- Greer (NC) 1913 Brown C
[From: The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Vol. 2, 1952; also music from Vol. 4. Their notes follow.
I would have thought this version would have appeared in the Greer or perhaps Abrams collection in MS form. Although it is similar to several versions (see Abram's and Greer MS in my collection)- I have not found this identical MS.
R. Matteson 2013]
40. James Harris (The Daemon Lover) Brown Collection
(Child 243)
If the various traditional versions of this ballad all go back, as Child believed, to the long-winded, pedestrian seventeenth-century broadside of 'James Harris,' they constitute something of an argument for Barry's doctrine of communal re-creation. For its range as traditional song, see BSM 79, and add New Hampshire (NGMS 95-7), Tennessee (SFLQ xi 127-8), North Carolina (FSRA 38-40), Florida (SFLQ viii 160-1), the Ozarks (OFS I 166-76), Ohio (BSO 70-7), Indiana (BSI 136-48, JAFL lvii 14-15), Illinois (JAFL LX 131-2), Michigan (BSSM 54-8), and Wisconsin (JAFL LIT 46-7, originally from Kentucky). Few regional collections made in this country fail to record it ; [1] it is therefore surprising that Child knew, apparently, only one American text and that a fragment. It is almost always called in America 'The House Carpenter.' The notion that the lover from the sea is a revenant or a demon, present in the original broadside and less definitely in some of the other versions in Child, has faded from most American texts; with us it is a merely domestic tragedy. And perhaps for that very reason it is one of the favorites of American ballad singers. There are some fourteen texts in the North Carolina collection, most of them holding pretty closely to one version. A full text of this version is given first and most of the others described by reference to this.
Footnote for above:
1. There are traces of it in our K and M versions.
C. 'The House Carpenter.' [text] Sent by I. G. Greer of Boone, Watauga County, to C. Alphonso Smith in 1913 and later to the North Carolina collection. It is essentially the same as A, with some minor variations: seven ships, instead of six, and weeks for months in stanzas 9 and 12. [The Greer's text should be in his collection, I can't find it.]
1 "We've met, we've met, my old true love,"
"We've met, we've met!" said he;
"I'm just returning from the salt salt sea,
And it's all for the love of thee."
2 'I could have married a king's daughter,
For she would 'a' married me;
But I forsaken the crown of gold,
And it's all for the love of thee.'
3 'If you could 'a' married a king's daughter
I'm sure you air to blame;
For I am married to a house carpenter,
And I think he's a nice young man.'
4 'If you will leave your house carpenter
And go along with me,
I'll take you where the grass grows so green
On the banks of Sweet Willie.'
5 'If I will leave my house carpenter
And go along with thee,
Have you anything to maintain me upon
And keep me from slavery?
6 'I have seven ships on the ocean wide
A-sailin' for dry land,
A hundred and fifty bold seamen
For to be at your command.'
7 She picked up her sweet little babe
And kisses she gave it three,
Saying, 'Stay at home, my sweet little babe,
And keep your pappy company.'
8 She dressed herself in silk so fine,
Most glorious to behold;
As she walked out toward the wharf
She outshined the glittering gold.
9 She had not been on sea two weeks,
I'm sure it was not three,
Until she lamented in her true love's ship
And wept most bitterly.
10 'Are you a-weepin' for my silver or my gold,
Or either for my store?
Or are you a-weepin' for your house carpenter
That you will never see no more?'
11 'I'm not a-weepin' for your silver or your gold
Or either for your store;
I'm just a-weepin' for my sweet little babe
That I never shall see no more.'
12 She had not been on the sea three weeks,
I'm sure it was not four,
Until there sprung a leak in her true love's ship
And sunk it to rise no more.
13 'A curse, a curse on all seamen,
A curse for evermore;
For you have robbed me of my house carpenter
That I never shall see any more.'
C. 'The House Carpenter.' Sung by Dr. I. G. Greer. Recorded as ms score at Boone, 1913. Except for a few deviations, which are shown in the variations below, this tune is the same as that used by Mrs. Rebecca Icenham, version D. For an interesting and subtle use of tonal material observe the combination of measures 5 and 2 in the last two measures.
For melodic relationship cf. ***SharpK i 251, No. 35H, measures 1-4 and 6-8, No. 35 J, L, measures 6-8, and P, measures 1-4; FSF 313, No. 168B, measures 3-4, same in FSSH 115, No. 23B and SCSM 400, version A ('James Hards') ; TBV 594, No. 40V, measures 1-4 (basic melodic line) ; *FSRA 38, No. 18; SharpK i 209, No. 28B, measure 6 ('Maid Freed from the Gallows').
Scale: Hexatonic (3) plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: aa^bc (2,2,2,2) = ab (4,4).