The Two Sisters- (NC) pre1943 Brown 4A
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, 1952, Viol. 4 version A, by an unknown informant. This is one of the better US collections and has nine versions - five with music examples. The text is identical to the first stanza of Brown A.
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 Paul G. Brewster, who has made an intensive study (as yet unpublished) of this ballad, believes that, as ballad, it is definitely Scandinavian in origin, starting in Norway some time before the seventeenth century and spreading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.
A. 'The Two Sisters.' There is no recording of this version, but the Collection contains two manuscript copies, in different hands but otherwise identical, of the words and tune. It is included here, though it is probably not of North Carolina provenience.
For melodic relationship cf. *FSF 243-4, No. 147A. The melodic intervals of the first three measures of our version are the same. Scale: Heptachordal, plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: aa1a1b (4,4,4,4).
1 There was a man lived in the west
Bow down, bow down
There was a man lived in the west
Bow once to me
There was a man lived in the west,
He had two daughters of the best.
I will be true, true to my love.
And my love will be true to me.