The Two Sisters- Gordon (NC) c1920 Sutton Brown C
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, 1952 which is one of the better US collections and has nine versions - five with music examples.
This rare version is similar to Child B, not only in the "Edinboro" refrain, but in the older sister named "Ellen." This is only one of two extant versions in the US or Canada that have the resuscitation ritual (where the murderer girl's body and hair are made into an instrument) and the instrument which reveals the murderer.
R. Matteson 2014]
OLDER BALLADS MOSTLY BRITISH: 4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
4. The Two Sisters (Child 10)
For the range of this story in other lands and tongues, see Child's headnote; for its occurrence in Great Britain and America since Child's time, consult BSM 16-17 and add to the list there given Vermont (NGMS 3-4), Tennessee (BTFLS viii 71), North Carolina (FSRA 13), Florida (SFLQ viii 138-9), Arkansas (OFS I 50-2, 53-5, 59-60, 63), Missouri (OFS I 52-3, 55-8, 60-2), Ohio (BSO 17-8), Indiana (BSI 42-50), and Michigan (BSSM 32-4). Mr. Paul G. Brewster, who has made an intensive study (as yet unpublished) of this ballad, believes that, as ballad, it is definitely Scandinavian in origin, starting in Norway some time before the seventeenth century and spreading to Sweden, Denmark, the Faeroes (and thence to Iceland), Scodand, England, and America; and that the corresponding folk tale tradition is Slavic, probably Polish. The "singing bones" — the revelation of the crime by a fiddle made from the dead girl's body — have almost entirely vanished from American texts, but a trace of them is preserved in our version C. All but one of the versions in our collection belong to the common American tradition, marked by the "bow down" refrain.
C. 'The Two Sisters.' Mrs. Sutton got this from the singing of Mrs. Rebecca Gordon of Cat's Head on Saluda Mountain, who also sang for her 'The Earl of Murray' (Child 181); see p. 160 below. This version is remarkable in two ways; it is the only version found in America, so far as I can learn, that uses the "Edinboro" refrain, and it preserves, what is almost as rare in American versions, something of that feature which Child thought was the essential core of the story, the revelation of the crime through a part of the dead girl's body — in the older versions some of her bones as well as her hair, but here merely her hair. The "Edinboro" refrain is found in Child's B (from two of Mrs. Brown of Falkland's manuscripts), D (from Kinloch's manuscripts), and E (from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe's Ballad Book)— all excellent versions.
1 There were two sisters in a bower,
Edinboro, Edinboro,
There were two sisters in a bower,
There came a boy to be their love.
Edinboro town
2 He courted the oldest with a ring,
But loved the youngest above everything.
3 He courted the oldest to be his wife,
But loved the youngest as his life.
4 Upon one morning bright and clear
The oldest called to her sister dear,
5 And took her down to the old mill stream
And with her hands she pushed her in.
6 'Your rosy cheeks and yellow hair
Have stole my love for evermore.'
7 Sometimes she sunk, sometimes she swam.
Till she came down to the old mill dam.
8 The miller raised the flood gates up
And pulled the drowned lady out.
9 You couldn't see her golden hair
For jewels fine that were so rare.
10 You couldn't see her fingers white
For golden rings she wore on them.
11 He took three strands of her yellow hair
And with them strung his fiddle rare.
12 The first tune that it did sing
Was 'Farewell to my father king.'
13 The second tune that it did sing
Was 'My sister Ellen drowned me.'