The Housecarpenter- Hicks (NC) 1940 Brown A-music Vol. 4 (Abrams No. 4)
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore; Volume 4, 1957. The recording is found in the Abrams Collection. Here's the link to the recording: http://contentdm.library.appstate.edu/docapp/abrams/field_recordings/house_carpenter_hicks.html
The complete text was copied down by Nora's daughter, Addy, who knew how to read and write. Nora is part of the Hicks/Harmon family, the Mast Gap branch that included her mother Alice. This version is probably quite old as the Hicks family can be traced to Samuel Hicks (also Hix) who was born c.1695 in Goochland, Virginia and died in NC in the 1760s. See also Jane Hicks Gentry's version collected by Sharp in 1916 and Rena Hicks' version (Burton).
R. Matteson 2013, 2016]
40. James Harris (The Daemon Lover) Brown Collection
(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.
[From: Music from Volume IV]
A. The Housecarpenter.' Sung by Mrs. Nora Hicks. Recorded at Mast's Gap, Watauga county, August 28, 1940. This, together with the Myra B. Miller and the Greer versions, shows a remarkable melodic relationship to the second half -of 'Cross of Christ,' No. 504 in Good Old Songs (Cayce). Measures 1 and 3 identical with those of 40H, and measures 2 and 3 are identical with those of 40C.
For melodic relationship cf. ***TBV 593, No. 40H and 594, No. 40V, measures 1-4; FSF 313, No. 168B; FSS 524, No. 25L, measures 3-4 only; **SharpK I 251, No. 35H, measures 1-4; xhid. J, measures 1-5; P, measures 1-4; FSSH
115, No. 23B; SCSM 400, A ('James Harris') ; *FSRA 38, No. 18.
Scale: Hexachordal, plagal. Tonal Center: b-flat. Structure : aa1bb1 (2,2,2,2)= ab (4,4). Circular Tune (V).
Text:
THE HOUSE CARPENTER- Sung by Nora Hicks; Copied by Addie Hicks; Given me by Edith Walker [I've edited for spelling and punctuation]
We've met, we've met, my own true love, [1]
We've met we've met, said he.
And I am just returning from the salt, salt sea [2]
And it's all for the love of thee.
I could have married the king's daughter fair
And she would have married me
If I have forsaken a crown of gold
And it's all for the love of you.
If you could have married the king's daughter fair
I am sure you are to blame;
For I am married to a house carpenter
And I think he's a nice young man.
If you will leave your house carpenter
And go along with me;
I will take you where the grass grows so green
On the banks of sweet Willie.
If I should leave my house carpenter
And go along with you
Have you anything to maintain me upon
To keep me from slavore? [slavery]
I have three ships all on the sea
All sailing for dry land
One hundred and fifty brave sea men
All shall be at your command.
She picked up her sweet little babe
And kisses gave it three
Saying, "Stay at home you sweet little babe
Keep your poppy [papa] company."
She dressed her self in silk so fine
Most glorise [glorious] to be hold
And as she walked down towards the sea
She out shined glittering gold.
They hadn't been sailing for about two weeks
I am sure it was not three;
Till she fell a-weeping in her true lover's arms
And weep most bitterly.
"Are you weeping for my gold?" he said
"Are you weeping for my store?
Are you weeping for your house carpenter
Which you never shall see any more?"
"I am not weeping for your gold," she said,
Nor either for your store.
I am just weeping for my sweet little babe
That I never shall see anymore. "
They had not been sailing but about three weeks
I am sure it was not four;
Till there sprung a leak in her true lover's ship
And it sunk for to rise no more.
"A curse, a curse to all the sea men
A curse, a curse" said she;
"For they have robbed me from my house carpenter
I shall never see no more. "
1. Daughter's transcription has "We met, we met, our old true love".
2. Daughter's transcription has "salt lake sea." She sings "salt, salt, sea."