The House Carpenter- Wallin- first version- (NC) c.1940 Yates REC
[From: Far in the Mountains: Volumes 3 & 4 of Mike Yates' 1979-83 Appalachian Collection. Yates is spot on about the two verses that have been brought in from other Child ballads-- verses 7 and 13. This is one of the outstanding versions of this ballad that I've heard-- even though Wallin is not an outstanding singer. His rhythm is excellent and the text is excellent. The extra verse (verse 13, "Take me out. . .") has been adapted from Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight.
Doug Wallin was also recorded in 1993-- my transcription is very similar but there are some changes- for example the "What banks" stanzas- which perhaps Wallin changed from the family version that was similar to local singer Mary Sands' version. She was collected by Sharp in 1916. Compare especially verse 7, which sheds some light on the text Sharp collected.
A similar version of this ballad was sung by Cas Wallin's wife (Cas is Doug's uncle), Vergie and can be heard online at Digital Appalachia. It's unclear why other Sodom singers (including Dellie Chandler Norton, Dillard Chandler and Sheila Kay Adams) have titled this, "The Little Farmer Boy." Clearly Doug's version is part of this local family version. Part of his mother Berzilla's (nee Chandler) version can be heard at Digital Appalachia. Berzilla is Dellie Chandler Norton's sister.
Cf. The Little Farmer Boy- Chandler (NC) pre1975 REC; and Little Farmer Boy- Dellie Norton (NC) 1976 REC.
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
[NEA Award bio online] Doug Wallin was born in 1919 (died 2000) and grew up in the Sodom-Laurel section of Madison County, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His parents, Lee and Berzilla Wallin, were farmers who earned their only income from a small annual crop of tobacco and raised all the food for their family of 12 children. In his spare time, Lee Wallin sang and played music. He was a banjo player, and was a favorite at local "frolics" and box suppers, and his wife was similarly inclined. She also played banjo and liked to sing and tell stories that she learned growing up in the mountains. Doug's uncle, Cas Wallin, led the hymns in the local Church of God, and "when the preacher was out of earshot, he would sing ballads or blow a tune on his mouth harp."
Berzilla Wallin used to speak of the visit of the renowned English ballad collector Cecil Sharp to Madison County around the time Doug was born. Sharp described the Sodom-Laurel as a "community in which singing was as common and almost as universal a practice as speaking." Many of the local residents, in addition to Wallin's family, sang ballads, and it was among them that Doug became part of this vital tradition.
While growing up, Doug learned ballads and songs from his mother and father, and in a relatively short time he was recognized in the community as one of the best-known unaccompanied singers of Southern Appalachian tunes. The ballads he sang were among the most direct reflections of the cultural heritage brought by early white settlers to the Appalachian region. They are reminiscent of those sung by settlers who came directly from England, as well as those who came from lowland Scotland and northern England via a long tenure in the north of Ireland.
Traditional ballads usually consist of four-line rhyming stanzas with an occasional brief refrain and a relatively short melody that repeats with each verse. Ballads often recount powerful and evocative tales that touch the main themes of love, death, betrayal, and loss. Individual singers sometimes embellish ballad verses in performance, though the traditional themes have a remarkable continuity that has been passed on from one generation to the next for centuries.
Through the years, Wallin has learned to play the fiddle and sometimes accompanies himself when he sings, although he still prefers the traditional unaccompanied ballad form. He has studied the historical origins of the ballads he performs and prides himself on the completeness and complexity of his repertoire.
Wallin has performed at festivals such as the British American Festival, the Mountain Heritage Festival at Cullowhee, North Carolina, the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival at Mars Hill, and the Celebration of Traditional Music at Berea, Kentucky. He stands as a representative of his entire community, a role that he believes is appropriately fitting for the repertoire itself, since the surviving British ballads in this country have been traditionally sung as solo accounts of long ago.
7. The House Carpenter (Child 243, Roud 14)
(Sung by Doug Wallin at his home at Crane Branch, Madison County, NC. 23.5.83)
'We've met, we've met, my old true-love.
We've met once more,' said he.
'I've just returned from the salt, salt sea,
And it's all for the sake of thee
'Now I could have married a king's daughter dear,
And I'm sure she'd have married me.
But I've forsaken all her gold,
For the love I have for thee.'
'If you could have married a king's daughter dear,
You had better have married she.
For I've lately married a house carpenter,
And a nice young man is he.'
'If you forsake your house carpenter,
And come along with me,
I'll take you where the grass grows green
On the banks of Sicily.'
'If I'll forsake my house carpenter,
And come along with thee,
Pray tell me what you have on land and sea
To keep me from slavery.'
'I have three ships upon the sea,
They're making for dry land.
I have three hundred jolly sailor boys,
You can have them at your own command.'
Then she dressed up in a yellow robe,
Most glorious to behold.
She walked the street around and about,
And she shined like glittering gold.
The she picked up her tender little babe,
And kisses gave it one, two, three.
'Stay at home, stay at home, you tender little babe,
And keep your papa company.'
They hadn't been sailing on the sea two weeks,
I sure it wasn't three.
'Til she began to weep, and she began to mourn,
She wept most bitterly.
'Are you weeping o'er my house?
Are you weeping for my store?
Are you weeping for your house carpenter,
Who's face you'll see no more?'
'No I'm not weeping for your house.
Neither for your store.
I'm weeping for my tender little babe,
Whom I left a-sitting on the floor.'
They hadn't been sailing on the sea three weeks,
I'm sure it wasn't four,
'Til the ship struck a rock, to the bottom she go,
She goes to rise no more.
'Take me out, oh, take me out,
Take me out,' cried she.
'For I'm too rich and cost-er-lee,
To rot in the salt water sea.'
'Now don't you see that white cloud a-rising?
As white as any snow.
There is a place called heaven you know,
Where my tender little babe will go.'
'Now don't you see that black cloud a-rising?
As black as any crow.
There is a place called hell you know,
Where you and I must go.'
Yates' notes: Originally titled James Harris, or, The Daemon Lover, this 17th century broadside ballad has survived best in the southern uplands of America, although at least one version has been recorded from an Irish singer, and it was still being collected in England at the turn of the last century. Doug's reference to heaven and hell is but a shadow of the ballad's original supernatural element in which the seducer turns himself into a cloven hoofed devil.
Early collectors made much of the ballad's supernatural elements, but later writers, such as Dave Harker, have paid more attention to the ballad's role as a vehicle for the social control of married women. (See Harkers article A Warning in Folk Music Journal volume 6, number 3, 1992, pp. 299 - 338, for example). Stanza 13, by the way, seems to be from another ballad, The Outlandish Knight (Child 4) while stanza 7 is similar to lines found in the ballad of The Green Wedding, a secondary form of the ballad Katharine Jaffray (Child 221, Roud 93), or to stanzas 4 and 10 of Fair Ellender and Lord Thomas (Child 73) as sung by Doug's uncle, Cas Wallin, on track 16 below. Interestingly, Doug does not include this verse in his version of Lord Thomas on track 24 below). North Carolina singer Annie Watson has a good version on Smithsonian Folkways CD SF 40012, whilst the Ozark singer Almeda Riddle sings her version on Rounder CD 1706. Texas Gladden's version from Virginia can be heard on Rounder CD 1800 and a reissue of Tom Ashley's 78rpm version is available on the Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music (SFW CD 40090).