The House Carpenter- Tab Ward (NC) 1915 Burton
[From Burton and Manning's Folksongs II, 1969.
Verse 14 should be combine with verse 13 as a tag or repeated part at the end. The Ward, Hicks and Harmon families were well known for their ballads and Jack tales in the Beech Mountain area. Ward, a mountain farmer, took up the banjo again in the 1960's after his wife died.
To listen; Jack Guy Folk Music Recordings; reel 2, side 1; 3rd song 2:46 (Abrams Collection)
http://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/92ddf5b2552423b25ae76750eed0f4fb.mp3
R. Matteson 2013]
TAB WARD- bio by Burton and Manning on Folksongs II
Nathan Talbert Ward was born June 4, 1903, the fourth of eight children. His father was a farmer from ward Branch who married a girl also from up on the Beech and moved to Spice Creek, where Tab was born. His grandparents too came from and lived near Beech Mountain: in fact, his great-grandfather Nathan Presnell, Tab says, was the first Presnell to come to Beech Mountain he came as a bear hunter from Alexander county and "just decided to stay." Tab went to Rominger school and attended church meetings at both the Baptist and Methodist Churches. He married a Hicks girl, also from Spice Creek; then in 1938 he moved about five miles away to the banks of the Watauga River where he presently lives. Like his father, he is a farmer, although he has done logging jobs on nearby Grandfather Mountain" Aside from his visit to Ohio to see one of his six children and a trip to Myrtle Beach, Tab has stayed near Beech Mountain all his life; he says that he was "too young tor the first war and too old for the second one."
When Tab was twelve years old he began to play the banjo; however, he "didn't do much partying" and there was little dancing though on Friday nights at Rominger school there were "speaking programs" with music and jokes and tales. Atter a lapse of more than thirty years he resumed his music some eight years ago when his wife died. He knows several frails, but he uses the double-knock or double-thumb all the time. In this frail the wrist remains loose and the thumb picks the melody alternately with the drone string, while the nails of the index and middle fingers "lick" the strings; when the nails get thin, picks are used. Tab tunes "eight or nine" different ways, and he varies these "chords" according to the song. He says that the "old folk way" of playing a song is to sing and then "drop out a verse, "alternating each sung stanza with an instrumental rendition of the tune. Like his banjo-playing, Tab Ward's guitar-playing was learned "by ear" but his fiddling was picked up from Roby Monroe Hicks when the two of them "made music" together. Mr. Ward accompanied his Songs for this volume on his homemade fretless banjo.
Tradition (excerpt about N. T. "Tab" Ward)
By Henry Glassie
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 108, No. 430, Common Ground: Keywords for the Study of Expressive Culture (Autumn, 1995), pp. 395-412
In the early 1960s, I often visited N. T. Ward of Sugar Grove, North Carolina. He knew many ancient ballads and several unusual local songs, and had even recast an old song into an account of the rough lifestyle he adopted after his wife's death. My intention in those days, when we accepted the obligation of documentation, was to record Tab Ward's entire repertory (cf. Abrahams 1970:147-160; Goldstein 1964:134-138). We spent hours with the tape recorder, and I was fortunate to hear him perform frequently for his neighbors in his kitchen and in the local store where the musicians gathered. The best I ever heard him play was one day when, seeing his orange pickup in the lane, I knew he was home and walked up on the porch. He was inside, singing "The Merry Gold Tree," [Ward, a farmer who could not read, learned this from his grandson reading the text to him. (Folksongs and their makers By Henry H. Glassie)] accompanying himself on the plywood fretless banjo he had made. I stood and listened. The quality of his performance, the full volume of his voice, the energy in his hands, suggested he was playing for a valued and knowledgeable audience. He was. I entered and found him completely alone. I like to play, Tab Ward told me, and I like to hear the old songs. I remembered Wesley Sharp, a banjo picker from farther down the Blue Ridge, who played only for himself, after chores, on the back porch. Wes Sharp was one of the best musicians I have ever met, but he told me that he would not play in public for five dollars a day; he played, he said, only for his own amazement. Tab Ward would play anywhere, any time, but he played best for himself.
THE HOUSE CARPENTER (child 243)- Sung by Tab Ward, April 29, 1966; learned from his sister in 1915.
tonality: pentatonic IV; range: octave
(The two lines of stanza 14 are sung to the last two phrases of the tune. Cf. Mrs. Presnell's and Mrs. Payners variants, pp.56 and 105.) The American variants do not retain the supernafural character of the lover in the old English version, "James Harris," which was printed as early as 1737.
1. "We met, we met, my old true love,
We met, we met once more;
And Itm just returnin' from the salt, salt sea,
It's all for the love of thee."
2. "I once could've married to a king's daughter, dear,
And she would have married me;
But I just been a-crossing the salt, salt sea,
Itrs all for the love of thee."
3. "Oh, you could've married to a king's daughter, dear,
I'm sure you was the blame;
But I am married to a house carpenter,
Sure he's a fine young man."
4. "Go leave, go leave your house carpenter
And come and go with me;
I take you a-down where the grass grows,
The banks of Sweet Willie."
5. She picked it up, her little babe,
And kisses she give it three;
"Go stay at home, you poor littte babe,
And keep your papa company for me."
6. She dressed herself in silk so fine,
Most glory to behold;
As she marched off down the street,
She outshined glitter and gotd.
7. She dressed herself in silk so fine,
Most glory to be seen;
She held her head as high as 'at a queen,
Her heart felt just the same.
8. "Oh, here I brought my littte ship
Cross the stormy mains;
And I knew gow that you loved me,
And I loved you just the same."
9. Oh, it hadn't been on ship two weeks,
I'm sure it wasn't three,
When she fell down a-weepin' on her true lover's ship,
And she wept most bitterly.
10. "Are you a-weepin? for my silver and my gold?
Are you a-weepin? for my store?
Are you a-weepint for my house carpenter
Who you never will see anymore?"
11. "I'm not a-weepin' for your silver nor your gold,
And neither ior your store,
But I am a-weepin' for my house carpenter
Who I never wiil see anymore."
12. Oh, they hadn't been on ship three weeks,
Sure it wasn't four,
When it sprung a little leak in her true lover's ship,
And it sunk for to rise anymore.
13. They cursed, they cursed to you all, seamen,
They cursed, they cursed to You all.
"You robbed me of my house carpenter
Who I never will see anymore."
14. "You robbed me of my poor little babe
Who I never will see anymore."