The Oldest (?) Text of "Edward"- Wilgus 1966
The Oldest (?) Text of "Edward"
by D. K. Wilgus
Western Folklore, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1966), pp. 77-92
The Oldest (?) Text of"Edward" *
D. K. WILGUS
THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE is meant to be provocative. The subject is, in fact, somewhat more restricted. I shall discuss the possible implications which one text has for the hypothetical ancestor of Child ballad No. 13, which we rightly or wrongly call "Edward." I shall also consider the implications which this text has for the hypothetical origin and development of the ballad form, or at least the manner of performance of early ballads. Finally, I shall touch on the implications which this text may have for a number of folk-song texts in American collections.
The text under consideration has reposed forty years in the unpublished collection of the late Josiah H. Combs. Its existence was noted in the Journal of American Folklore (XXXIX, 93) in 1926, and it was entered as variant GE V in Archer Taylor's study of the ballad, Edward and Sven i Rosengard (Chicago, 1931). The text was contributed to the Combs collection in 1924 by
Carey Woofter with the following comment:
This version of the ballad was sent to me by Mrs. Rosa Pierce, of Annamoriah, Wirt County, West Virginia. She got the ballad from her mother, Mrs. Sarah Adams, who has been dead several years. Mrs. Adams was my aunt, and learned the ballad from my grandmother, who came to this country from Scotland in 1840, and settled in the Freeman's Creek settlement in Lewis County, Virginia. Aunt Sarah was her oldest child, and no doubt learned the ballad before grandma joined the church and decided that all ballads were the works of the devil.
I wrote to my cousin the other day, but this is the only one she could remember.
1. How came that blood on your coat lapel,
Edward, O Edward?
How came that blood on your coat lapel,
Edward, O Edward?
2. That is the blood of my gray falcon,
Mother, O mother;
That is the blood of my gray falcon,
Mother, O mother.
3. Falcon's blood was never so red,
Edward, O Edward;
Falcon's blood was never so red,
Edward, O Edward.
4. That is the blood of my beagle,
Mother, O mother;
That is the blood of my beagle,
Mother, O mother.
5. Beagle's blood was never so red,
Edward, O Edward;
Beagle's blood was never so red,
Edward, O Edward.
6. That is the blood of my brother,
Mother, O mother;
That is the blood of my brother,
Mother, O mother.
7. How did the quarrel begin,
Edward, O Edward?
How did the quarrel begin,
Edward, O Edward?
8. The quarrel was over an apple tree,
Mother, O mother;
The quarrel was over an apple tree,
Mother, O mother.
9. What death do you desire to die,
Edward, O Edward?
What death do you desire to die,
Edward, O Edward?
10. I'll paddle the boat over the old mill dam,
Mother, O mother;
I'll paddle the boat over the old mill dam,
Mother, O mother.
11. What will you leave to your poor wife,
Edward, O Edward?
What will you leave to your poor wife,
Edward, O Edward?
12. Grief and pain all the rest of her life,
Mother, O mother;
Grief and pain all the rest of her life,
Mother, O mother.
13. What will you leave to your young son,
Edward, O Edward?
What will you leave to your young son,
Edward, O Edward?
14. I'll leave him the world to wander up and down,
Mother, O mother;
I'll leave him the world to wander up and down,
Mother, O mother.
15. What will you leave to your mother dear,
Edward, O Edward?
What will you leave to your mother dear,
Edward, O Edward?
16. The curse of hell from me you shall have,
Mother, O mother;
The curse of hell from me shall you have,
Mother, O mother.
This is an interesting text on many counts. The name "Edward" is rare in the texts of Child 13, and this is the first text published since 1765, and indeed only the second published text, in which the name "Edward" occurs in the refrain of the ballad. Furthermore, it agrees at different points with the two earliest published texts in English, those of Percy (1765-Child B; Taylor GE B) and Motherwell (1827-Child A; Taylor GE A). Indeed, the basic traits are those of the Motherwell text: (1) blood on the coat lapel; (2) the sequence of bird, hound, and brother; (3) the tragic quarrel over an apparently insignificant plant; (4) the implied suicide by embarkation in a boat, bottomless in one case and on a dangerous voyage in the other; (5) the bequests of grief and pain to the wife and a wandering life to the son; (6) the curse on the mother.
But the Woofter-Combs text agrees more precisely with the Percy text: (1) in the alternation of "Edward" and "Mother" in the refrain lines; (2) in the phraseology of the stanza cursing the mother; (3) in the consistent use of couplets alternating questions and answers.
There are other texts ageeing closely with either the Percy or the Motherwell text. The Davis AA text from Virginia[1] corresponds almost exactly with Motherwell's, excepting for the amazing substitution of "son Percy" for "son Davy." The Randolph D text from Arkansas,[2] though fragmentary, is clearly related to the Percy text, but calls the son "Ronald" instead of "Edward."
The most important common trait of Percy, Motherwell, Davis, and Woofter- Combs texts, which is not found elsewhere, is the cursing of the mother. But the Woofter-Combs text is related to both the Percy and the Motherwell texts in such a way that one must accept either of two hypotheses:
1. The Woofter-Combs text represents a tradition from which the Percy and Motherwell texts were independently derived.
2. The Woofter-Combs text represents a later combination of the traditions represented by the Percy and the Motherwell texts.
The first hypothesis does not assume that this is a simple genealogical problem among three texts. Variations or substitutions in sequences of incremental repetition may not be of great significance in determining relationships. Blood on the coat may be substituted for blood on the sword, the horse may be substituted for the hound even in different performances by the same singer.[3] The disposal of the property by the murderer might be omitted in one performance, while in another the wife and child might be combined in one stage of the bequests rather than appearing in two successive ones. The victim might possibly even alternate between brother and father, although such a change would be more serious. And the mere shift of proper names such as "Edward" and "Davy" might not in itself be of significance among a group of song texts circulating in a community.
Textual developments such as the change of embarkation in a bottomless boat into paddling a boat over the mill dam may obscure the nature of the original punishment, but they must not obscure more fundamental matters of form. The most significant characteristic of the Woofter-Combs text is the consistent and symmetrical pattern of its stanzas-whether we consider the iteration of each question and the iteration of each answer as separate stanzas, or each question and answer as a single stanza. Each question is repeated, followed each time by a refrain which does not vary throughout the series of seven questions. Each answer is likewise repeated and followed by an invariable refrain. The dialogue proceeds inflexibly to its conclusion.
Have we not here not only the most "primitive" form of "Edward," but the most "primitive" form of any English and Scottish popular ballad? Here is the long postulated example of the couplet ballad arising from dramatic improvisation, which can be set clearly in a sequence of evolution leading to a quatrain ballad. Indeed, the Woofter-Combs text is more "primitive" than one could ever have expected in its reflection of the dramatic performance of a ballad, or of a leader-chorus interchange. The dialogue verses represent the performances of the dramatis personae, or at the least of the solo performer.
One or both of the performers are given additional time to improvise succeeding verses not only by the choral refrains (possibly performed by a split chorus in this case), but by the repetition of the dialogue verses. Even if the performance is not conceived as dramatic, the form gives the minstrelleader additional time to fashion the next verse, as the repetition of each verse could be the function of a second singer, or even the chorus, since there is not even the necessity of variation, Kalevala-fashion. Furthermore, there is no rhyme to hamper the improvisation of the singer; what rhyme exists between stanzas (or between succeeding dialogue verses) might well be accidental. A comparison of the stanza pattern of the Woofter-Combs text with those of the Percy and Motherwell texts is instructive in its demonstration of the development of the quatrain form from simple verse-refrain repetition.
Stanza patterns:
I. QR1QR' AR2AR2
(Woofter-Combs)
II. QR'QR2 AR3AR2a
(Motherwell, stanzas 1, 2, 3)
III. Q'R'Q1Q2 A'R2AIA2
(Percy)
IV. QRAIRARQ22 R1A2R2
(O what blude is that on the point o your knife,
Dear son, come tell to me?
It is my horse that I did kill,
Dear mother and fair ladie.)
(The blude o your horse was neer sae red,
Dear son come tell to me;
It is my grandfather'st, hat I hae killed,
Dear mother and fair ladie.)
V. QIRA1A2 Q2RA3A4
(Motherwell, stanzas 3ff.)
The Percy text preserves the alternation of the "Edward-Mother" refrains in successive stanzas, but substitutes for the repetition of each refrain line a new dialogue verse tied by end rhyme to the corresponding verse in other stanzas. (Stanza pattern III.) The Motherwell text begins by substituting for the second and differing refrain lines of alternating stanzas, new refrain lines which differ from yet rhyme with the initial refrain lines in each stanza, but are slight variants of each other. (Pattern II.) This pattern is not, however, sustained. By stanza 4, the second refrain line has become a new dialogue verse. By stanza 7, the repetition of the questions and answers has begun to be omitted, and the answer and new dialogue verse have begun to be assimilated to the question and refrain to form a quatrain. This is Pattern V, which has become the standard for the Anglo-American tradition of Child 13. Some few texts[4] contain stanzas with identical alternating refrains (Pattern IV), but these soon settle back into the normal Pattern V.
Another distinctive feature of this conjectured development is the establishment of the [i] rhyme, a persistent characteristic of the Anglo-American tradition of Child 13, which often remains even when the ballad has been borrowed for the conclusion of another narrative.[5] We may thus explain the exchange of "Edward" for "Davie" and the expansion of "Mother" to "Mother lady" by the necessity of conforming to the [i] rhyme established in the tradition represented by the Percy text. Texts in which "my son David" is paralleled with "come promise, tell me true" [6] may be seen as corruptions, since the rhyme is merely concealed in each phrase.
The comparison of the form of the Woofter-Combs text with that of other ballads in the Anglo-American tradition of "Edward" thus provides us with an intimate look at the first stage of the process which James H. Jones has summarized:
Detached from the dramatic situation, lacking the advantage of dialogue and supporting chorus, the ballad made a new demand on the singer's improvising ability and evolved a new form. First the refrain became variable, then narrative lines developed ... as stage directions to compensate for the loss of actual memesis, replacing the unassigned speeches which now had to be assigned, since the characters who spoke them were no longer visible performers. Instead of a slow, line-by-line improvisation of single situations, strophic improvisation developed. Since the commonplaces are mainly strophic or half-strophic (seven-stress or fourteenstress), they probably developed after the detachment as the chorus disappeared and the refrain line became part of the strophe.[7]
The "Edward" ballad has barely begun this development, having merely lost the need for repetitional dialogue and invariable refrain, and still representing in arrested state the substitution of commonplace for refrain. Furthermore, "Edward" is unique in demonstrating the development of the so-called ballad stanza from the couplet with refrain, for unlike those in other couplet ballads, the English dialogue verses in "Edward" do not rhyme and the abcb rhyme pattern develops from the alteration of the invariable refrains to dialogue verses.
If this hypothesis neatly and uniquely illustrated the dramatic-improvisation theory, it is at variance with the conclusions of the many students of this ballad. Of the many points of conflict, including the alleged "literary" character of the Percy text,[8] three are of major importance: (1) the opening of the ballad; (2) the motive of the murder related in the narrative; (3) the at least implied involvement of the mother in the murder because of the son's curse in the concluding stanza.
The problem of the ballad opening is perhaps the least important, because it is the most conjectural, and at the same time the least controversial. Archer Taylor, in his thorough study of the ballad on the basis of the evidence available in 1931, concluded that the Anglo-American texts were defective because of their abrupt opening, and that certain Scandinavian texts preserved if not the original opening, at least a surrogate for it. Taylor's reasoning was based to a considerable extent on the generalization that "folk narrative begins with a state of calm and develops into a state of conflict." [9] On the other hand, the dramatic-improvisation theory views a narrative introduction as a part of the "epic process," an addition to what was once a purely dramatic performance. In this instance, there is little disagreement, as all known or even postulated introductions to "Edward" do not deviate from the dialogue form of the ballad, excepting when "Edward" seems to have become attached as a conclusion to another ballad. The one piece of recent evidence is a unique opening stanza from a Belfast singer:
"Where have you been a' the whole afternoon?
Son, come tell it unto me."
"I was fishin' and fowlin' the whole day long
All through Mother's treachery."[10]
Although we shall have to return to this stanza in another connection, we can dispose of it here by pointing out that, however "calm" it may be, it is consonant with the dramatic character of the succeeding stanzas.
The problem of the murder motive is more serious. The conclusion that the crime was fratricide is substantiated on all counts, and the substitution of patricide in the Percy text is of little consequence. But the conclusion of Phillips Barry[11] and Tristram P. Coffin[12] that the motive for the fratricide was a quarrel over a young girl, possibly a sibling of the brothers, is not substantiated by the acceptance of the Woofter-Combs text as the earliest known form. For the full statement of the alleged kenning for a nubile girl-"a willow wand that would never been a tree"-depends on the last verse of the strophe, represented by the invariable refrain in the Woofter-Combs text and assumed in the dramatic improvisation theory to be a late development.
(It must be noted that the kenning is sometimes fairly clearly expressed in a single verse:
It began about the breaking of the bonny hazel wand.[13])
And most serious is the concluding curse on the mother. This is the narrative feature which is confined to Woofter-Combs, Percy, Motherwell, and Davis AA texts. Other texts, Anglo-American, Scandinavian, and Finnish, conclude-unless the trait is altogether absent-with a paraphrase or kenning for "never." And after careful consideration, Archer Taylor opted for a form of this conclusion as representative of the earliest tradition of "Edward," and concluded that the curse on the mother was a "contamination" from "Lord Randall" (Child 12). One must agree with Taylor that in the tradition of "Edward" the "paraphrases for 'never' and the curse are incompatible," [14] as they never occur in the same variant, even when the mother's involvement in the crime is clearly suggested. The ballad with the unique opening quoted previously:
"Where have you been a' the whole afternoon?
Son, come tell it unto me"
"I was fishin' and fowlin' the whole day long
All through Mother's treachery."
ends with the disposal of the lands:
"What are you going to do with your houses and your lands?
Son come tell it unto me."
"I will lay them bare for the birds of the air,
For there's no more welcome there for me."
Unlike the kenning for the young girl, the paraphrase for "never" does not extend essentially into the last verse of the strophe:
O son, O son, when will you return?
Son, come tell it unto me?
When the moon and the sun will both shine as one,
And that you will never see.[15]
Thus it does occur in early couplet forms of "Edward" and it does occur in "Son David" forms collected from recent Scottish tradition. The hypothesis therefore must be that both the paraphrase for never and the widespread wife-child-property sequence in the bequests, also postulated by Taylor as original,[16] belong to the later tradition of the ballad.
It can be clearly seen that the Woofter-Combs text, in spite of many phrasal similarities, cannot represent the source for all the traits in both the Motherwell and the Percy texts. Not only is the bequest of property missing, but its insertion in the Woofter-Combs text would upset the pattern of incremental repetition in the bequests.
And it must be further noted that although the exact stanza pattern of the Woofter-Combs text is unique in the history of the ballad, something like it could occur without reference to choral performance merely by a singers' consistent repetition of each half of a quatrain form. In fact, it does occur in the Davis B and CC texts,[17] ultimately derived from the same Virginia singer:
"What is that on the end of your sword,
My dear son, tell to me.
What is that on the end of your sword,
My dear son tell to me?"
"'Tis the very blood of an English crane
My father sent to me.
'Tis the very blood of an English crane
My father sent to me."
Yet these texts demonstrate all the characteristics of "quatrain development" and without the repetition would conform to stanza pattern V. One wonders if other variants were performed in such a repetitive manner, but set down in simplified form.
I have tried to present Hypothesis 1 and its implications as convincingly as possible; but I am not convinced. The Woofter-Combs text is neat- too neat. And the argument that it has been used to support not only contradicts much of the evidence offered by the full tradition of the ballad, but fits the text into an already assumed process of ballad development a little too neatly. One could easily argue that the Percy text derives from a "Davie" text and that the loss of rhyme resulted merely from the substitution of "Edward." Phillips Barry suggested that Percy made the substitution for the sake of the friend from whom he had the ballad, David Dalrymple.[18] But if one cares to base an argument on an unusual text, why not find in the Davis AA text a better reason for the Bishop's alteration?
What blood is that on your coat lap,
My son Percy, my son Percy?
What blood is that on your coat lap,
And the truth please tell to me.
The Bishop took too much pride in his name to permit it to grace a murderer. Hypothesis 2-that the Woofter-Combs text represents a later combination of the traditions represented by the Percy and the Motherwell texts has much to recommend it. That the folk-that is the singers from whom songs in our collections have been secured-are ignorant of and uninfluenced by literary versions or by copies of songs in scholarly collections is an assumption no longer tenable. Holger O. Nygard has demonstrated the influence of a Buchan version of Child 4 on Scottish tradition.[19] That John A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs served as a songster as well as a library collection can be amply demonstrated. Bradley Kincaid not only secured many songs from the published and unpublished collections at Berea College to pass on to his myriad listeners, but recalls learning "The Wreck on the C &: 0" (Laws G 3) from John Harrington Cox's Folk-Songs of the South. Considering the literary status and frequent reprinting of the Percy text, the infrequency of its peculiar traits in later tradition is actually quite surprising. In 1957,[20] Margaret Blum demonstrated the slight influence of the Percy text on American tradition: a few scattered uses of the name "Edward," seldom in the text of the ballad, and one undoubted parallel of a portion of the text, with the name altered to "Ronald." Nor is the folk tradition of the Motherwell text much stronger. Recently collected "Son David" texts lack the curse on the mother, and the one text implicating the mother does so in a line of the opening stanza.
But the Woofter-Combs text cannot be discussed in terms of mere influence from the Percy and the Motherwell texts. It does not contain merely traits which "filtered through to the folk." To put the matter bluntly, if the Woofter-Combs text is a later production based on the previous texts, its genesis must be attributed to a deliberate and skillful redactor who created a "primitivized" version which fits exactly the classic analysis of the ballad esthetic. Repetition, present everywhere, is consistent and uniform. Incremental repetition occurs in climactic series of threes. The story is reduced to elemental simplicity. If this operation was performed by an unknown Scots reviser who bequeathed it to the oral tradition exemplified by the West Virginia Adams-Pierce family, the Northern dialect was skillfully removed on the way. While one could postulate the occurrence of these revisions to be any time between 1827 and 1924, I suggest that we concentrate on the possibility of quite late creation in attempting to answer the questions of not only "when?" but "who?" and "why?"
A considerable proportion of Anglo-American ballad criticism has been devoted to the problems of learned revisions and ballad forgeries. But there have been few accusations and fewer demonstrations of such practices in the twentieth century. The editorial practices of John and Alan Lomax have been criticized, but on the grounds of editorial policy, not fabrication. Carl Sandburg admits to a "constructive memory" [21] in the devising of The American Song Bag. Charles Finger admitted having composed "Roy Bean," which he contributed to the Lomax collections.[22] Louis W. Chappell attacked not the texts but the interview records of Guy B. Johnson.[23] And there is the ugly but supposedly admitted charge that John Robert Moore
fabricated a text of Child 218.[24]
The problems seem to have been extremely limited, considering the abundant opportunities and the difficulty of detection. One might say cynically that the reason has been not only the sincerity and dedication of folk song collectors and scholars, but the lack of great profit in the enterprise. The rewards of "planting" a "doctored," stolen, or fabricated text have generally demanded the admission of the joke, as was the case with a recent version of "Bonnie James Campbell" which circulated among urban singers of folk songs.[25] Of course the rarity of disclosures may simply testify to the skill of the hoaxers, the gullibility of the critics, and the difficulty of detection. With the growing financial stake in folk song, even in folk-song scholarship, we may expect the problems to increase, and I doubt that we can ignore them. Students have been mildly concerned by John Jacob Niles' serial revelations concerning the genesis of "Venezuela" and "I Wonder as I Wander," but they have been amazingly silent when confronted with The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles.
One of the most fruitful sources of folklore fabrication is student collection. The greater the pressure from the folklorist-professor, the more likely the chance of faked collections. I have had the occasion to observe such results in my own collectanea and those of others who also exploit the talents and industry of their students. Some of the texts are too crudely faked to mention, such as copies of Library of Congress texts used as illustrations in another class; identical collections submitted by students who allegedly collected from different informants; texts of Negro spirituals collected in 1955 in the exact texts and melodies reported in Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867). And I take this occasion to acknowledge that a tale I published in Western Folklore in 1956[26] was copied by its student "collector" from a WPA compilation unavailable to me when I made a too cursory investigation of it. And there are many texts so questionable that the stated informants must be interviewed. But what does one do when, as in the case of The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles, the informants are excessively dead?
I must state clearly that Josiah H. Combs cannot be involved in the possible fabrication of the Combs-Woofter text of "Edward." I am in possession of the original Woofter MS. Furthermore, Combs made no special effort to print this text and never intimated in speech or writing that it was unusual or important. On the other hand, his failure to publish it does not reflect acknowledgement or even suspicion of fabrication. The director of Combs' University of Paris dissertation, Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats Unis, approved only the publication of songs not previously reported from American oral tradition. The problem, then, involves the teacher-student relationship of Josiah H. Combs and Carey Woofter.
I regret that I know little of the background and activities of the late Carey Woofter. He was a student at West Virginia University during the 1922-1924 faculty residence of Combs. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees and subsequently became Dean of West Virginia State College at Glenville. He contributed a few texts to the collection of John Harrington Cox and a good many to the Combs collection; he was reputed to have a large unpublished collection. Combs, in his last letter to me, described Woofter as "an eccentric West Virginia mountaineer, as eccentric as his name sounds ... an avid student and collector of folksongs and Highland dialect; (he) enjoyed getting Cox in deep water" (the last statement refers to disputes with John Harrington Cox, to which Combs made witty references). Apparently the only items from his collection which Woofter himself published consisted of a word-list in American Speech (II, 347ff.) in 1927. We have, then, only the evidence of the texts he contributed to the Cox and Combs collections.
To judge the character of the full Woofter collection-assuming there was one-by the items he contributed to Combs might be highly inaccurate. Perhaps he selected only old, unusual, and rare materials-or materials in which he felt Combs had a special interest. It is difficult to identify all of Woofter's contributions to the Combs collection; I identify eighty-four as certain, eight as probable, and thirty-one additional items as possible. Of the eighty-four clearly identified texts, thirty-three are Child ballads; of the eight probable, four; and of the thirty-one possible, eight.[26a] If we assume that the full Woofter material had the miscellaneous character of the average Appalachian collection, he was practicing a good deal of selection in his contributions. Furthermore, the selection which Combs was forced to make in his editing of Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats-Unis naturally emphasizes the number of rare and unusual items. Consequently, we can examine these samples of the Woofter collection only in and of themselves, without reference to the evidence of the bulk of the material.
I must first emphasize that most of the texts would occasion no questions, even some of the rare items. The texts of "Broomfield Hill" (Child 43; FSMEU, pp. 127ff.) and "Prince Robert" (Child 87; FSMEU, pp. 138f.) would occasion no suspicion, nor would that of "Mary Hamilton" (Child 173; Combs Collection No. 32),[27] despite its resemblance to Child's A text. And Woofter's "Johnny Collins" version of "Lady Alice" (Child 85; Combs Collection No. 25B) was deposited before the importance of its type was known. A unique item such as "River Song" (Combs Collection No. 205) beginning
Pork and beans and eggs to fry
Doughnuts, kraut and apple pie
We'll hit Gilmer by and by.
rings true. Many of Woofter's text inspire great confidence in their picture of an uninhibited native collector contributing unexpurgated texts to an uninhibited archivist. Consider a stanza of a Woofter text of "The Farmer's Curst Wife" (Child 278; Combs Collection, No. 40A):
7. And when he came to hell's great door
Says, "Get off of my back, you damned old whore."
On the other hand, there are a number of texts, published and unpublished, concerning which one has qualms. In one instance the critic's questioning is supported by the annotation. A version of "The Cruel Brother" (Child 11; Combs Collection, No. 5) with a unique refrain begins:
There's three fair maids went out to bleach the cloth,
All along the chip-yard so clean;
There's three rich men came to court them all,
As plainly it could be seen.
The text is noted as having been "doctored" by one Daniel De Weese. The informant is given as David Chenoweth, Minorra, West Virgina. A David Chenoweth of Gip, Gilmer Company, West Virginia, is the stated source for a MS variant of Child 275 entitled "Old John Jones" (Combs Collection, No. 38). This variant was also contributed by Woofter to Folk-Songs of the South (pp. 516f.), where it is credited to "Mrs. Sarah Clevenger of Briar Lick Run, near Perkins, Gilmer County. She learned it from her grandmother, Mrs. Rebecca Clevenger, who came from London County, Virginia, seventy-eight years ago, as the date in the family Bible gives it." Are we dealing with a chain of sub-collectors, mere carelessness in annotation, or something insidious?
Consider that in 1933 Louis W. Chappell pointed out variations in a text of "The Yew Pine Mountains" which Woofter supplied to both Combs and Cox,[28] although Chappell's target seems to have been Cox rather than Woofter.
A number of other texts in the Combs collection, definitely or probably contributed by Woofter, have important literary connections. "Ranting Roving Lad" (FSMEU, p. 172; Combs Collection, No. 144) is almost identical to the text printed by Allan Cunningham in The Songs of Scotland (pp. 208f.), including Scots dialect. Whether the suspicious text of "The Gowans Are Gay" (FSMEU, pp. 163ff.), closely related to the text in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (12th ed., 1763 et. seq., pp. 404f.), was contributed by Woofter is not clear. But Woofter did contribute "The Old Wife" (FSMEU, pp. 155ff.; Combs Collection, No. 128), which is quite similar to "The Auld Wife Beyont the Fire" in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (14th ed. et. seq.), where it is published as an old song with additions. For the Scots euphemism for sexual intercourse, snishing, the Woofter text substitutes spruncin'. Aside from a version of "The Old Wife" on a recent LP recording[29] almost certainly derived from Combs' printing, the only other notice of the word spruncin' is in a quite interesting localized version of "The Gypsy Laddie" (Child 200; Combs Collection, No. 33B) in the Combs collection, also contributed by Carey Woofter.
This evidence is certainly not as conclusive as Thoreau's fish in the milk. But after considerable work with the Combs collection, I begin to feel that I can recognize a Woofter text. In Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats Unis (pp. 129ff.) is a text of "Fair Annie (Child 62), titled "The Sister's Husband" and credited to J. R. Umstead, Mt. Zion, Calhoun County, West Virginia. The Combs MSS provide no further information, but Woofter did collect in this county and this text has what seems to be the "Woofter touch." Fair Annie is stolen away by the Indians; Lord Harry ransoms this unknown girl and she lives with him in a "mansion-house," but never tells him her name. When Lord Harry is later bedded with a new bride, "Fair Annie took a banjo on her hand / To play the two to sleep." This is the kind of rationalization which should happen in an American text, but seldom does. I am reminded of Edward paddling his boat over the mill dam. And believe me, I want to accept as the composition of a West Virginia folk poet the lines:
22. But if my sons were seven buck deer
Drinking at the old salt lick,
And I myself a good hunting dog,
I soon would see them kick.
And if "The Sister's Husband" is not a traditional variant, the reviser was not working crudely on the basis of the Sargent-Kittredge edition of Child, for
30. Take your husband, my sister dear;
You were never wronged by me,
More than a kiss from his dear mouth,
As we came up the bay.
reflects the Child F version from Motherwell's Minstrelsy:
29. Come to your bed, my sister dear,
It never was wrangd for me,
But an ae kiss of his merry mouth
As we cam owre the sea.
Yet all this proves nothing. A hundred suspicious texts do not prove one fraudulent. Nor would one fraudulent text do more than cast suspicion on others in the same collection. Thus neither of the hypotheses I have advanced merits acceptance. Perhaps all I have been able to do is to render the issue even more obscure than it was when I started. I hope I have not been unfair to a departed folk-song collector. And I hope I have not indicated that a single rare text should not contradict the evidence of all the other texts. Such an event could happen. But I am not yet convinced that the Woofter-Combs text will perform such a task for "Edward."
University of California, Los Angeles
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Footnotes:
* Read at the meeting of the American Folklore Society, New York, December 29, 1964.
1. Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., More Traditional Ballads from Virginia (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1960),pp. 62ff.
2. Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, I (Columbia, Mo., 1946), 69.
3. The Scots tinker singer Jeannie Robertson (Mrs. Jean Higgins) of Aberdeenshire illustrated this point. A performance reported in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, VII: 4 (Dec., 1955), 253, contains the sequence of horse and hound; a performance on Prestige/ International 13006 repeats that sequence, but includes a "bottomless boat" stanza not present in JEFDSS; and a variant from her singing communicated to me in 1962 by Hershel Gower has the sequence of horse, hound, and hawk, as well as the bottomless boat. A generally parallel variant from Margaret Stewart of Aberdeenshire (JEFDSS, loc. cit., p. 252) has horse in one stanza of the sequence and both hawk and hound in another stanza.
4 Taylor, GE I, GE L.
5. Taylor, GE D, GE E, GE F, GE G; cf. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Cambridge, Mass., 1882-98), I, No. 49 D, E, F, G.
6. See the Robertson and Stewart variants cited in note 3.
7. "Commonplace and Memorization in the Oral Tradition of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads," Journal of American Folklore, LXXIV (1961), 99.
8. See especially Bertrand H. Bronson, "Edward, Edward. A Scottish Ballad," Southern Folklore Quarterly, V (1940), Iff.; "A Footnote to Edward, Edward," SFQ, V, 159.
9 Edward and Sven i Rosengard, pp. 5-15.
10 Paddy Tunney, Folk Legacy FSE-7, 12" L.P. Tunney supposedly learned it at Mrs. Conners. Cf. The Folk Songs of Britain, Vol. IV, Caedman TC 1145, 12" LP, collected and edited by Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax. Tunney does not sing the stanza in question, but the accompanying brochure prints it as one of two "verses not included on the record: (as sung by Mrs. Conners but not by P.T.)."
11. Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, No. 5 (1933), p. 20.
12. "The Murder Motive in 'Edward'," Western Folklore, VIII (1949), 314ff.
13. Taylor, GE C.
14. Edward and Sven i RosengArd, p. 51
15. The Folksongs of Britain, Vol. IV; The Child Ballads, Vol. I, Caedmon TC 1145, 12" LP, sung by Angela Brasil, England, recorded by Peter Kennedy.
16. Edward and Sven i Rosengard, p. 36.
17. Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Mass, 1929), pp. 121ff.; More Traditional Ballads, pp. 65ff.
18. BFSSNE, No. 5, p. 20.
19.The Ballad of Heer Halewijn (Knoxville, Tenn., 1958), pp. 302-305.
20. " 'Edward' and the Folk Tradition," SFQ, XXI (1957), 131ff.
21. J. Frank Dobie, "The Traveling Anecdote," Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, XXV (1953), 13.
22. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs (New York, 1938), p. 147.
23. John Henry (Jena, Germany, 1933).
24. JAF, LX (1947), 117.
25. Songs of the West Sung by David Frederickson, Folkways FH 5259, 12" LP.
26. X XV, 58-59
26a. A few more Woofter texts (and tunes) have been recently discovered through the aid of B. A. Botkin. An examination of them affects the argument only to the extent that they seem genuine oral variants, largely of game songs.
27 The Josiah H. Combs Collection of Songs and Rhymes, Western Kentucky Folklore Archive, University of California, Los Angeles. The numbering is that given in the Appendix to Folksongs of the Southern United States, a new edition of Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats-Unis now in press.
28. John Henry, pp. 3-4.
29 Paul Clayton, Unholy Matrimony, Elektra 147, 12" L.P.