The House Carpenter- Shifflett (VA) 1961 Foss (Bronson 57 with minor text differences)
[From: Anglo-American Folksong Style by Foss and Abrahams; 1968. Also found online. See also the version by Florence Shifflet who is kin to Robert. Following is an excerpt from Foss'es online book.
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
From White Hall to Bacon Hollow by George Foss
Robert Shiflett is a well read man who gives the lie to the stereotype of the illiterate hillbilly who unknowingly perpetuates the folk tradition. He is an inexhaustible talker, story teller and conversationalist. He is mechanically gifted (he has made rifles from scratch by hand tooling the barrels and all working parts). He is constantly trying to find more efficient ways to perform menial chores (some neighbors call this “laziness”) like shelling walnuts by driving over the tough husks with tractor tires inflated to a pre-calculated pressure. He collects things from coins to antiques. He combines equal parts of fragile health and hypochondria. He has an acute awareness of those things he is heir to and his role in passing them on to his friends and his children. He is also the only person I “paid” to sing folksongs for me.
I was told about Robert Shiflett by Paul Clayton Worthington and Roger Abrahams who were frustrated in being unable to get him to sing for them, although he discussed and even recited some fine old ballads including one that Worthington described as a ”very unusual version of 'The Gypsy Lady' with all sorts of internal rhyming.” I confidently boasted that I would visit with Mr. Shiflett and succeed where they had failed. Throughout my first several visits we talked and talked and talked, but all requests for the singing of ballads received the same reply, “Just can't sing anymore, can't get my breath, my lungs are too weak. But I used to sing a great deal.”
During these long but frustrating talks I learned of Mr. Shiflett's other interests and of his background. I remembered an unusual coin my father had given me, a Confederate Commemorative Half Dollar, and asked Mr. Robert if he had one such. When he said he did not, an idea dawned on me and upon my next visit to the area the fifty cent piece was in my pocket. I went to Mr. Shiflett's neat white frame house and was invited in as usual for coffee and small talk. I fished out the coin and handed it over with the comment that since I was not really a coin collector and he was, I wanted him to have it since he appreciated its worth more than I did. He took it and seemed really touched as he put it with his other pieces. But more important I had touched some spring of rapport between two people who value things that most other people only use or ignore. Robert Shiflett without any further persuasion commenced to perform some twenty five songs, ballads, fiddle and banjo tunes. His lungs held up fine.
Listen: http://www.klein-shiflett.com/shifletfamily/HHI/GeorgeFoss/SONGS/song5.html
George Foss on House Carpenter: If I am allowed a personal favorite of the many wonderful old ballads sung in the Southern mountains, it is this one. It is called "The House Carpenter" commonly, but is also known to ballad scholars as "James Harris, the Demon Lover". The story is homiletic parable of the inescapable punishment that follows deep moral error. The supernatural element of a former love who 'returns' from the sea to tempt a young woman into fatal error gives a dimension to the ballad seldom found in moralistic tales. This ballad has its roots in the same ancient myth that inspired Richard Wagner's operatic masterpiece, "The Flying Dutchman" in which a young woman may sail endlessly with an other-worldly mariner until she shows remorse and breaks the magical spell.
In this version as sung by Robert Shifflett (Brown's Cove, Va. July 15, 1961), we have a wonderfully complete text coupled with an appropriately austere tune set to a rare pentatonic scale.
The House Carpenter- sung by Robert Shifflett of Brown's Cove, Va. July 15, 1961.
"Well met, well met my old true love
Well met, well met," cried he,
"I have just returned from the great salt sea
To take thee away with me."
"I once could have married a king's daughter fair
She wanted to marry me
But a crown of gold have I refused
Because of my love for thee.
If you could have married a king's daughter, sir,
I'm sure you are to blame,
For I am married to a house carpenter
And he is a nice young man."
"Will you forsake your house carpenter
To sail away with me?
I will take you where the grass grows green
On the banks of the low country."
"How can I leave my house carpenter
Oh, how can I leave I say?
How could I leave my three little babes
To sail so far away?"
"I have seven ships upon the sea
All sailing for this land
And a hundred and ten brave, jolly, bold men
Shall be at your command."
She picked up her three little babes
She gave them kisses three
Saying, "Stay here with your papa, my dear(s),
To keep him company.
She arrayed herself in rich attire
Most glorious to behold
And every hamlet they rode through
She shown and glittered like gold.
They had been on the sea about two weeks
I'm sure it was not three
When this fair maiden began to weep
She wept most bitterly.
"Is it for the gold you weep
Or is it for the store?
Or can it be for your house carpenter
You never will see any more?"
"It is not for the gold that I weep
And neither for the store
But I am grieving for my three little babes
I never shall see any more."
They had been on the sea about three weeks
I'm sure it was not four
When there sprang a leak in the bottom of the ship,
And it sank to rise no more.
"What is it that looms so black,
As black as the feathers of a crow?"
"That is the smoke from the fires of Hell
Where you and I must go."
"What is it that shines so bright
As white as driven snow?"
"That is the gate of Heaven itself
Where we can never go."