The House Carpenter- (MO) 1903 Williams/Belden A
[From: Old-Country Ballads in Missouri, II by H. M. Belden; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 19, No. 75 (Oct. - Dec., 1906), pp. 281-299.
This version is also version A from Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society, 1940- Belden notes are below.
R. Matteson 2013]
CHILD 243. - James Harris (The Demon Lover).
(A) THE HOUSE CARPENTER.
Collected by Miss Williams in 1903, Clinton County. She has failed to record the source of this item.
"Well met, well met, my own true love,
Well met, my own true love;
I have come across the salt sea brine,
And it 's all for the love of thee,
It's all for the love of thee.
(Repeat so at the end of each stanza.)
"If you will leave your house carpenter
And go along with me,
I'll take you where the grass grows green
On the banks of the sweet Willee.
"I have six ships all sailing on the sea,
All sailing for dry land,
And if you come and go with me
You may have them at your command."
She dressed her babe all neat and clean
And kissed it one, two three :
"Lie there, lie there, my sweet pretty babe,
Be your father's company."
She dressed herself all neat and clean,
All dressed in living green,
And all the cities that they went through
They took her to be the queen.
They had not been on board more than two weeks, -
I 'm sure it was not three, -
Till this fair one began to weep,
And she wept most bitterly.
"Are you weeping for my house and land,
Or weeping for my store?
Or weeping for that house carpenter
That you never shall see any more?"
"I am neither weeping for your house nor land,
Nor weeping for your store,
But I am weeping for that house carpenter
That I never shall see any more.
"I am neither weeping for your house nor land,
Nor weeping for your store,
But I am weeping for that dear little babe
That I shall never see any more."
She had not been on board more than three weeks, -
I'm sure it was not four, -
Until the deck of the ship sprung a leak
And her weeping was heard no more.
[Also From: Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society, 1940, listing versions A-I with texts from JOAFL for A, B and H. Texts are supplied for C, D, G and I with music for D and G. I've listed Missouri Folk-Lore Society as Belden A-I since Belden was the editor and organizer of the collection.
Belden's Notes: James Harris (The Daemon Lover)
(Child 243)
All of Child's versions from oral tradition are Scotch; A and B are from ballad print, A a Pepys broadside and B from a later garland. He gives no American texts except two stanzas of an American stall print that had appeared in a magazine. Since then Barry has printed the Demarsan (New York) broadside, of about 1860, in JAFL XVIII 207-9 - a text to which most of the Anterican copies frorn oral tradition conform rather closely. The nearest to it of the Child versions is B, the garland print. There can be, I think, no question, in the case of this ballad, of the importance of print in spreading and perpetuating it. Yet if Child was right in believing that the seventeenth century broaclside was the original or at least the ancestor of the traditional forms, we have here a fine instance of what Barry called communal recreation. Nothing could well be more prosaic and pedestrian than the James Harris of the Pepys collection; but tradition has transformed it into a pretty good ballad, and one that has mantained. a strong hold on the affections of ballad singers. Whether Child B and the DeMarsan print are the work of professional ballad-makers or rnerely record a text wrought out by folk singers it would not be easy to say; probably the latter. Child adduces no parallels from other languages. There is horvever a Danish ballad (DgF 39) of the treacherous merman which bears some resemblance to it in plot.
It has been reported in recent times from Aberdeenshire (LL 196-7) and Dorset (JFSS III 8.1) in the old country, and in the United States from Maine (BBI,I 304-10), Vermont (GGIIS 80-2, BFSNE VI 78, the latter Irish), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXV 274-5), Virginia (TBV 439-78, SharpK I 256, 257, SCSM 151-6, Grapurchat for 25 August, 1932), West Virginia (FSS 139-49), Kentucky (JAFL XX 257-8, TKMS 54-6I, DD 172-3, SharpK (I 246-8, 256, 257, 258, SCSII 158-9), Tennessee (JAFI-r XI-III 274-6, SharpK(I 249-5A,252-4, FSSH 116-8, SFL,Q II 75), North Carolina (JAFIT XLV 2I-5, SharpK I 241-6, 248-9, 250-2, 254-6, 258, FSSFI 113-6, SCSM 756-7), South Carolina (SCB 151-5), Mississippi (FSM 119-22), Texas (PFLST X 159-62), Ohio (JAFL XXXV 347-8), Indiana (JAFL XLViII 295-6), Illinois (JAFL- XXVI 360-1, by way of Nebraska, reprinted ABS 43-5), Iowa (MAFITS XXIX 11-3), Minnesota (Dean 55-6), and Missouri (Ozark Life V No. 8, JAFL XLIX 209-11). In SFLQ II 75-6 is a text, learned from a man in Kentucky, of 'The Rocky Mountain Top' which curiously combines stanzas from this ballad with others from Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight.
In Missouri the texts are much alike, and all are close to the DeMarsan broadside. The title, where one is given, is 'The House Carpenter' (the English 'ship carpenter' is lost, except in version I). All except E and H, which lack the opening lines, begin with the man's greeting to the woman,'Well met, well met, my own true love' or the like. In all he replies to her question of how he is to maintain her by telling of his ships. In all he promises to take her 'where the grass grows green on the banks of the sweet Willee 'A B F G,' of the salt water sea 'C,' of the sweet Dundee 'D,' of Elmor 'E,' of liberty 'H -variations of DeMarsan's 'where the grass grows high, on the banks of old Tennessee.' In all she kisses her baby goodbye and bids him keep his father company; and tells her lover, in reply to his question what she is weeping for, that she is weeping for her baby (in C for her husband and her baby). All except C and I have the curious incremental repetition in the statement of time (see the text of D, below). In all the ship sinks (springs a leak in all except E) and disappears, with no intimation of supernatural agency. Two traits of the DeMarsan broadside, his boast that he might have married a king's daughter and the closing curse on seamen, have been lost from about half of the Missouri texts, the former appearing only in C D F H I, the latter only in B D G. The hills of heaven and of hell, the only clear evidence of the supernatural in American texts, retained in several from Virginia, Kentucky, and other southern states, are not in the DeMarsan broadside nor in any of the Missouri copies.
R. Matteson 2013]