The Two Sisters- Sullivan (VT) 1940 Flanders E
[From Flanders, Ancient Ballads, Vol. 1, 1966. It seems the first part wasn't remembered well. The part sent in later that year resembles a standard format. Notes by Coffin follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
The Twa Sisters [Notes by Coffin]
(Child 10)
One finds more confusions and more plot variations in the versions of this song than in those of any other Child ballad. Texts A-C below follow the most common English pattern: the "singing bones" motif is absent; the "bow down, I'll be true" refrain is used; the miller robs the drowning girl, shoves her back in the water, and is later executed; and the events teeter on the edge of comedy. In A and B the elder sister is burned at the stake. C, in which the two sisters, one drowned, flee "beyond the seas"; D, in which the miller is the father and lover of the girls and rescues the younger; and E, in which "to church they all did go" at the end, are quite typical of the mix-ups that can occur in this song. C, it would appear, has been learned in some fashion or other from Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland (English County Songs [London, 1893], 118). For texts similar to D, see JAF, XVIII, 131, and J. Harrington Cox, Folk Songs of the South (Cambridge, 1925), 2A. For one similar to E, see Harold Thompson's Body, Boots, and Britches (New York, 1940), 393. Songs such as the F fragment which actually include the harp made from the dead girl's body are rare in America. See Belden, 17, for a list of the few texts that preserve this trait which Child called the germ of the ballad. Archer Taylor, who studied the British backgrounds of this song in JAF, XLIII, 238 L., concludes that American variants with their use of the "beaver hat" (see A and D below) and their failure to describe the yellow hair of the victim (see A-E below) are from English, rather than Scottish, sources. For a bibliography, as well as an extensive cataloguing of story variations that have been worked off this English theme in America, see Coffin, 38-42. For a start on a British bibliography, see Dean-Smith, 113; Ord, 430 f.; and Greig and Keith, 9 f. Barry includes the song in British Ballads from Maine, 40.
The story itself is widespread in Europe in both tale and ballad form. Paul Brewster has recently done a complete study of "The Twa Sisters" in FFC, No. 147 (1953). He also included a good working bibliography to both the tale and the ballad in his Ballads and Songs of Indiana (Indiana University Publications, Folklore Series No. I [Bloomington, 1940], 42-43). He feels the song began in Norway before 1600, spread through Scandinavia, and then to Britain and the west. However, he indicates that the folktale tradition (see Aarne-Thompson, Mt. 780) is Slavic in origin. Harbison Parker's remarks in JAF, LXIV, 347-60, are not out of sympathy with this point of view.
In the light of this scholarship, it is fascinating to find a Polish version of the ballad like G in New England. Mrs. Stankiewicz' text, in which the younger sister is murdered during a raspberrying contest and in which the flute is made from reeds at the grave, is probably a folk variant of a ballad "Maliny," written in 1829 by Alexander Chodzko (1804-91). See Phillips Barry's detailed discussion of this text in BFSSNE, X, 2-5, and XI, 2-4. Pertinent bibliography beyond what is given there can be had by consulting the following: Paul Brewster's monograph cited above; the earlier study by Lutz Mackenson in FFC, No. 49 (Helsinki, 1923); Child, I, 124-25; and Jonas Balys, Lithuanian Narrative Folksongs (Washington, D.C., 1954), G7, 119-20. In Slavic countries it is more common to find "The Twa Sisters" as a tale than as a ballad. See also, BFSSNE, VII, 14, for a Swedish-American text.
The five tunes for Child l0 fall into three categories: 1) The versions sung by Eaton, Price, and White are fairly closely related, corresponding to group Ba in BC1 with the Eaton version a simplified form of the other two. The Montague tune corresponds to group Bd in BC1, being distantly related to the others, while the Polish melody does not seem to have musical relationship to any Anglo-American ballad tunes.
E. "The Two Sisters." The following words were dictated by Mrs. Ellen M. Sullivan of Springfield, Vermont, and taken down by her daughter Kathleen (Mrs. Harry Thomas). Due to a previous shock, Mrs. Sullivan was unable to be recorded. M. Olney, Collector; March 28, 1940.
The Two Sisters
He bought the youngest a fine fur hat.
He bought the youngest a fine fur hat;
CHORUS: Bow-down, Bow-down,
Bow-down and balance me.
The oldest didn't like that,
The oldest didn't like that.
I'll be true to my love,
I'll be true to my love.
The miller got his fishing hook
The miller got his fishing hook.
He fished the maiden out of the brook,
He fished the maiden out of the brook,
I'll be true to my true-love,
I'll be true to my truelove.
Later the same year, Mrs. Sullivan recalled the following lines:
One night as they walked by the river's brim
The oldest pushed the youngest in,
The miller he took his hook and line
And caught her by her crinoline.
Next Sunday to church they all did go
And now they're married, I suppose.