The House Carpenter- Tillett (NC) 1922 Brown 4 H
[Designated Brown 4H. From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 4, 1957. Notes from Volume 2 follow.
This version was taken from the singing of C.K. "Tink" Tillett, who was recorded in 1922 at Wanchese on Roanoke Island, for the Frank C. Brown collection, North Carolina Folklore, Vol. 4 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1957). Not sure if this was collected by Chappell or someone else (Warner or Chappell's son) but it is not included in Chappell's book. The text is possibly available through a recording by his son, I'll look for it.
The old-time herald: Volume 10, Issues 7-12 - Page 70 says: The entire English settlement on Roanoke Island disappeared and became the famous "Lost Colony." Mr. C.K. (Tink) Tillett playing his accordion with his wife, Eleazar Tillett, their son Cliff, and nephew Hub Tillett, standing. Wanchese, Roanoke Island, 1940.
Frank Warner in Folk songs and ballads of the eastern Seaboard says: Among our friends on these Outer Banks of North Carolina were C. K. Tillett and his family of Wanchese. Mr. Tillett's nickname was "Tink." These people live north of Cape Hatteras, on Roanoke Island. It used to be impossible to get thereThese people live north of Cape Hatteras, on Roanoke Island. It used to be impossible to get there except by boat, but now a million people go there every year over the causeway to see the Lost Colony Pageant.
R. Matteson 2013]
40. James Harris (The Daemon Lover) Brown Collection (Vol. 2)
(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.
H. 'The House Carpenter.' Sung by C. K. Tillett. Recorded on Roanoke Island, December 29, 1922. Measures 1 and 3 are identical with those of 40A. There is some Negro influence noticeable in the flattening of the seventh degree.
For melodic relationship cf. ***FSS 524, No. 25L, measures 3-4; SharpK 1 251-6, No. 35H and J, measures i and 3; **ibid., No. 35? and somewhat less, version B; FSF 313, No. 168B, and FSSH 115, No. 23B, measures 3-4; TBV 593-4, No.'4oM and N, measures 1-4; *FSRA 38, No. 18.
Scale: Hexatonic (4), plagal. Tonal Center: e-flat. Structure: aa1bcfa1c1 (2,2,2,2,2,2) = abb (4,4,4) or, to use Alfred Lorenz' terminology, nmm1 = inverted barform.