The Jews's Garden- Maples (TN) 1917 Sharp C
[My title. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, I, 1934 edition; collected by Cecil J. Sharp, edited Karpeles. Comprising two hundred and seventy-four Songs and Ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight Tunes; Including thirty-nine Tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Karpeles and Sharps notes follow. The opening stanza is corrupted and usually appears similarly:
The hallowday had just come on
The dew drops they did fall,
And every scholar of that school
Went out to playing ball, ball, ball,
Went out to playing ball. [Lucy Banks, KY- collected Raine]
Sharp collected the tune and a single last verse (similar text) from Miss Julia Maples, Sevier County, Tenn., April 19, 1917. Is she a relation?
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes; No. 31. Sir Hugh.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 155. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 539. Baring-Gould's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, pp. 92 and 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 120 (see also further references). Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 293 ; xxix. 164; xxxix. 108.
Texts with tunes :—M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes, p. 46. English County Songs, p. 86. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 264. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 46. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, xvii, tune No. 7. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 582. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 68 (published also in English Folk-Songs, Selected Edition, i. 22, and One Hundred English Folk- Songs, p. 22). Newell's Games and Songs of American Children, p. 76. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 148. D. Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. 53-5. Musical Quarterly, January 1916, p. 15. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxxv. 344; xxxix, 213. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 400 and 587.
C. The Jews's Garden; version of Sir Hugh. Sung by MR. W. M. MAPLES at Sevierville, Sevier Co., Tenn., April 20, 1917.
Pentatonic. Mode 3 (no 6th).
1. The drops of dew did in the school
And every scholar in the school
Was out a-playing ball, ball,
Was out a-playing ball.
2 They tossed the ball both to and fro;
In the Jews's garden it did go;
There was no one so ready to get it out,
There stood little son Hugh, etc.
3 The Jews's daughter come stepping along
With some apples in her hand,
Saying: Little son Hugh, come go with me
And I will give you them.
4 I cannot go, I will not go,
I cannot go at all,
For if my mamma she knew it,
The red blood she'd make fall.
5 She took him by the lily-white hand,
She drug him from hall to hall,
And took him to a great stone wall
Where none could hear his call.
6 She set him down in a little arm-chair
And pierced his heart within.
She had a little silver bowl,
His heart blood she let in.
7 She took him into the Jews's garden,
The Jews was all asleep,
And she threw him into a great deep well
Was fifty fathoms deep.
8 His mother then she started out
With a birch-rod in her hand;
Walked the streets through and through.
If I find little son Hugh,
I'd avowed she'd whip him home.
9 When she come to the Jews's gate,
The Jews was all asleep.
She walked on to a great deep well
Was fifty fathoms deep.
10 Saying: Little son Hugh, if you be,
As I suppose you to be.
Dear mother, I am here
And stand in the need of thee.
11 With a little penknife pierced through my heart
And the red blood running so free.
Mother, O mother, dig my grave,
Dig it long, wide and deep.
12 And bury my bible at my head,
My prayer-book at my feet.
And if any of the scholars ask for me,
Pray tell them I'm asleep.