Three Blackbirds- Delorme (NY-VT) 1880 Flanders A
[My date. From Flanders, Ancient Ballads; 1966; notes by Coffin follow. This is one of the rare US versions which compliment the Child ballad versions.
The informant, “Grandma” Lily Delorme, of Hardscrabble on the Saranac, NY, learned songs from parents and her grandfather, Gideon Baker, who fought in the War of 1812.
Delorme was one of the best informants of Flanders and Olney (also Porter who recorded 100 of her songs). Most of her ballads date back into the 1800s since she was born in 1869 and learned them from her family. Mrs. Lily Delorme's offficial residence was Cadyville, New York. She was born in Schuyler Falls, New York, in 1859. Her father was born in Starksboro, Vermont; her mother, in Schuyler Falls, New York. This ballad was learned in her home as a child.
R. Matteson 2014]
The Twa Corbies
(Child 26)
The tradition of "The Twa corbies" has given literature two of the most beautiful ballad poems known: the J. Ritson (Ancient Songs from the Time of King Henry the Third, to the Revolution of London, 1790], 155) and the Sir Walter Scott (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border [New York, 1902], III, 239) texts. The Ritson "Three Ravens" is a simple, honest lyric of true love without a maudlin or sentimental touch. It tells the wish of all knights, "God send euery gentleman, such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman." The Scott "Twa Corbies," on the other hand, is cynical, desolate, and Anglo-Saxon with the finality of its closing lines, "O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
the wind sall blaw for evermair."
Thus, it is surprising to study the history of the ballad. As it is rare in Britain (Child has only one text beyond the two mentioned above), as it is not known to any extent in Canada, and as there are no European analogues, one is at a loss to explain how such a restricted oral tradition has developed such perfect poems. The answer cannot be suggested by what is found in America, either. Although it is common here, it owes its popularity to a minstrel stage burlesque that had great currency about the time of the Civil War and to its inclusion in rewritten form in books like Cleveland's Compendium of 1859. The American versions are mostly nonsense material like Flanders C-J in which two crows decide to eat a dead horse and in which there are no human actors. With their lines, such as "Oh maybe you think there is more, but there isn't" and "The Devil thought to injure me by cutting down my apple tree," they are in a real sense not Child 26 at all. However, Flanders A retains much of the spirit of "The Three Ravens" text and, like the one that Earl J. stout (Folklore from Iowa [New York, 1936], 2)found preserves the fidelity of the hounds and lady love. Such a text, sporting the borrowed "red rose" cliche, is an outstanding discovery in a tradition as corrupted as this. Flanders B, though not as true to the Ritson text, is nevertheless dignified and is not from the music hall tradition of "Billy Magee Magaw." The Scott form of the song, unburlesqued and unsentimentalized, has been discovered in America, too. See Henry W. Shoemaker, Mountain Minstrelsy (Philadelphia, 1931), 276. For an American bibliosraphy and discussion' see coffin, 52-54. Dean-smith lists itbr pug. lll, and there is an extensive study of the ballad in Hermann Tardel's ZweiLied, studien, I. Die Englisch-Schottische Roben Ballade (Bremen). Jane Zielonko's remarks in her Master's thesis, "Some American variants of Child Ballads" ([Columbia University, 1945], 7l f.), are also useful.
The large number of tune families for this ballad in BC1 indicates the diversity of tunes by which this text is accompanied. Thus it is not surprising to find the three tunes presented here to be unrelated.
A. [The Three Blackbirds] As sung by Mrs. Lity Delorme of Caddyville, New York handed down from Vermont forebears of Starksboro, Vermont; M. Olney, Collector; June 18, 1942
The Three Blackbirds
There were three blackbirds on one tree,
I-dum, I-dum, derrie-I-aye.
There were three blackbirds on one tree,
I-dum-derrie-I-aye.
There were three blackbirds on one tree,
Saying, "Where shall we go dine today?"
I-dum, derrie-I-aye.
In yonders meadow there behold
A soldier lying dead and cold.
His horse is standing by his side
Waiting for him to get on and ride.
His hounds are lying at his feet
Licking the wounds that are so deep.
There came a maiden full of woe.
She turn-ed o'er his bloody head
And kissed the lips that once were red.
She laid herself down by his side
And there she lay until she died.
They dug a grave both long and wide
And placed this couple side by side.
Out of his grave a red rose grew
And out of hers a lily too.