The Swim Swom Bonny- Butcher (WV) 1935 Bayard
[From Bayard, submitted to Phillips Barry, editor of BFSSNE, No. 9, 1935 in the British Ballads section, and additional verses in an addenda in the following BFSSNE, No. 10 from Bayard with additional comments by Barry.
Taken from the refrain of Child C, "While the swans swim bonny-O"
R. Matteson 2014]
THE TWO SISTERS
(Child 10)
"The Swim Swom Bonny." Sung by Mr. Nicholas w. Butcher, native of Hundred, Wetzel County, West Virginia. S. P. B.\
[1. There was an old woman lived on the sea shore[1],
Hey oh, my Nanny!
She had some daughters, some three or four,
And the swim swom bonny!
2. He gave her a guinea gold ring,
Hey oh, my Nanny!
And to the other, much nicer thing,
And the swim swom bonny!]
3. 'Dear Sister, dear Sister, let's take a walk-
Hey oh, my Nanny!
"To see the ships a-sailing o'er-
And the swim swom bonny!
4 As they were walking along the sea shore,
The oldest pushed the youngest o'er[2].
5. She bowed her head and away she swam[3],
And she swum till she come to the miller's dam.
[6. The Miller daughter a-being at need,
Hey oh, my Nanny!
For to get some water to mix her bread,
And the swim swom bonny!]
7, (Crying) "Miller, oh miller, it's stop your mill,
For yonder comes a swan or a milk white maid."
8. 'The miller threw out his old grab hook;
He fetched her safely from the brook.
9. The- miller got her pretty gold ring,
And pushed her back in the brook again.
10. She bowed her head and away she swum,
Till she came to her eternal home.
11. The miller. was hung in his own mill-gate,
For drowning of my sister Kate.
_____________
1. the first two stanzas added from a later singing.
2. originally "in" changed to "o'er" also sung "off" at later singings
3. stanza added from a later singing.
All of my other versions of The Two Sisters belong to the vulgate southern form, both as to words and airs. This version has the teat of the southern vulgate form (except perhaps for stanza 4) but its air and refrain belong to the Scoto-Irish tradition (FSSNB., Bulletin 3, pp. 20-21). I think this air is a variant of Stanford-Petrie No. 688. Nicholas Butcher does not know where, or from whom he learned to sing the ballad this way. He sings these same words, also, to a form of the southern vulgate air, with appropriate refrains, thus:
[music upcoming]
The close similarity between the first lines of this air and that of Hey oh, my Nanny suggests that the vulgate air has had an influence on the Scoto-Irish air. The Scoto-Irish air and refrain, Mr. Butcher called: "another way of singing The Sea Shore."
Samuel, P. Bayard,
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
We are much indebted to Mr. Bayard for this very unusual version of The Two Sisters. Conflation of texts, done unhesitatingly by Scott (Child C, from Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802, II, 143) and apologetically by recent editors of popular anthoiogies, is something the folk has always done, though detection of it is difficult. Ballad tradition is by no means as simple as has been supposed. We have elsewhere noted (FSSNE., Bulletin 3, p. 13), that in the case of the Edinboro type of the Scottish tradition, the original Binnorie air of the ballad has been replaced by the Edinboro air of The Cruel Mother, with a resultant change of refrain. In the present instance we have proof of the use of two different airs, each with its own refrain, by the same singer, showing that the refrain belongs not to the text, but to the air, and, being the least stable part of the ballad, is not surely the oldest.
The Scoto-Irish tradition is a survival of a nearly extinct Scottish tradition, which early made its way to Ireland. Ten versions or fragments of it are known:
1. Child C* (J. C. Walker's text, combined by Scott with Mrs. Brown's text, Child B*--long lost, but since recovered from the Ritson-Rosenbach transcript of W. Tytler's manuscript --to form Child C).
2. Child G (Motherwell's MS., p. 104, ESPB., I, 131).
3. Child J (Notes and Queries, 4 ser., V, 23, from N. Ireland, ESPB, I, 132).
4. Child P (Motherwell's MS., P. 245, ESPB., I, 135: melody with one stanza in Motherwelf's Minstrelsy, p. xx., ed. Ticknor, Boston, 1846, pp. 274-5, FSSNE., Bulletin 3, P. 21).
5. Child DD (Child MSS., XVIII, 20, from Co. Meath, Ireland).
6. Child EE (Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, II, 109, one stanza, ESPB., I, 119).
7. Petrie 688.
8. Kidson, JFSS., II, 285, from an Irish singer in Liverpool.
9. Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia, K, p. 104.
10. Bayard Collection, Scoto-Irish A, printed in this Bulletin.
Child C*, communicated to Scott by J. C. Walker, Esq., author of Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, was "transcribed . . . from the memory of an old woman who had no recollection of the concluding verses; probably the beginning may also be lost, as it seems to commence abruptly" (Scott, l. c., ed. Lockhart, p. 170). Scott quotes the first stanza with the refrain which is diagnostic for texts of the Scoto-Irish tradition:
"O sister, sister, reach thy hand!
Hey ho, my Nanny, O:
And you shall be heir of all my land,
While the swan swims bonny, O."
A collation of Child C with Child B* gives the following results :
Stanzas 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, not of the tradition of Child B*;
Stanzas 10, 12, 13, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, correspond to nothing in Child B*;
Stanzas 10, 12, 22, 23, 25, 26, represented elsewhere in Scoto-Irish texts;
Stanza 13, in incremental sequence with child G, 7;
Stanza 27, "yonder stands my brother Hugh," unique, but absolutely genuine.
On the basis of the collation, stanzas 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 of Child C, together with the stanza quoted
by Scott, are to be assigned to Child C*, Walker's text, the oldest actual record of the Scoto-Irish tradition.
Stanza 4, of Mr. Bayard's text is sersungen.' it may have been originally:
"Miller, oh, Miller, it's stop your mill-dam,
For yonder comes a maid or a milk-white swan,"
that is, nearly as in Child Q, 12, a Scottish text of the fourth type: compare also the Type I Scottish text, Child M, 12, and the Scoto-Irish texts, Child G, 11, P. 13. The rhyme "dam . . swan" is Scottish (Taylor, JAFL., XLII, 238, fr.), but it exceeds the warrant of fact to regard the two rhymes "dam . . swan" and "swan . . woman" as diagnostic for Scottish and English tradition, respectively. Both rhymes are found in a conflate stanza of a purely Scottish text, Child CC, 12 (ESPB., IV, 449) overlooked by Dr. Taylor.
The swan-trait is old: it is in Child's archaic Scottish texts, V , 12 and CC, 12 (ESPB., I, 494, IV, 449) and has in the Scoto-Irish tradition only been carried over into the refrain. We doubt not a Scandinavian origin, even though no known Scandinavian text has it. There is good reason why the floating body at a distance might suggest a "milk-white swan." In the Scandinavian tradition of the ballad, the elder sister invites the younger to bathe in the sea-a trait sporadically surviving in both Scottish and Anglo-American texts, Child FI, 5; V, 7-8; U, 2--and, as she stands on the buck-stone, pushes her into deep water. As the two sisters were following the custom of their country, the body was nude when seen by the fishermen (Swedish B, in Geijer-Afzelius, III, 16), in contrast to the condition of overdress depicted incrementally in Child B*, B, 20-22; V, 14-18, and by inference in the Anglo-American texts, in which the rniller strips the body, but lacking in all known versions of the less sophisticated Scoto-Irish tradition.*
P. B.
* These comments are excerpted from Editor's monograph, The Two Sisters, A Critical Study"
Addenda THE TWO SISTERS
(Child 10: Addenda to FSSNE., 9, pp. 4-6)
Additional and. variant lines to "The Swim Swom Bonny" (The Two Sisters, Child No. 10); sung by Mr. Nicholas W. Butcher, Hundred, West Virginia, in the summer of 1935.
Coming before the first stanza as printed in FSSNE., 9, p. 4, by N. W. B., in 1935:
'There was an old woman lived on the sea shore,
Hey oh, my Nanny!
She had some daughters, some three or four,
And the swim swom bonny (or, bony)
He gave to her a guinea gold ring,
And to the other, much nicer thing.
Second verse of the second stanza, as varied
The oldest pushed the youngest o'er (or, off).
First verse of stanzas three and seven, as varied by N. W. B., in 1935:
It's first she sank and then she swam.
Following stanza three:
The miller's daughter a-being at need
For to get some water to mix her bread.
There was no variation in the tune, as far as I could determine. (Oct. 3, 1935.)
Samuel, P. Bayard,
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Barry: We congratulate Mr. Bayard for his recovery from tradition of the foregoing additional lines and stanzas; particularly the last with its curiously Celtic mid-rhyme, which is diagnostic for the older Scottish tradition (Child D, 12; E, 9; H, 12; I, 10; Q, 11; V, 11; W, 5; BB, 15a; CC, 11) and for the Scoto-Irish tradition (Child G, 10 ; P, 12; Kidson, 1, 3; Davis K, I). In the Anglo-American tradition, the traditional air to which, though independent of the Scando-Scotic Binnorie, is also Nordic, a form of the Scandinavian Hafsfrun (FSSNE., Bulletin 7, p. 14), this stanza, possibly not original, is found only sporadically and in a corrupt form: compare Child Rc, 6 (here quoted from the original source, T. Hughes, The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 225):
The miiler's daughter stood by the door,
Hey-down, &c.
As fair as any gilly-flow-er.
And I'll, &c.
Compare also Child Ra, 8; Rb, 8 i Y, 9. No known American version of this group has it.
We take occasion here to print the melody to the first Scoto-Irish version of The Two Sisters found in America (text in Davis, traditional Ballads of Virginia, p. 102). It was sent to us, April 1, 1931, by Miss Martha M. Davis, Harrisonburg, Virginia, as obtained from the singing of her aunt. The ballad of sung in braid Scots: "so" pronounced "saer," and "bread," "brede."
[music upcoming- See also Davis K)
This melody is a set of the form of the Scando-Scotic Binnorie, associated with the Scoto-Irish tradition. As sent in, it lacks tonal unity: phrase 1 is out of key. If this phrase be transposed, as indicated in the score, unity is secured, and the set shown to be closely related to Kidson's (JFSS, II, 28b); less so to Mr. Bavard's (FSSNE, Bulletin 9, p. 4).
P. B.