Two Little Devils- Gladden (VA) 1932 Davis AA
[From: More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Davis 1960. Davis's extensive notes are below the excerpt from Mike Yates. You can hear one version of Texas Gladden (1895-1967) singing "The Devil and the Farmer's Wife" on Texas Gladden; Ballad Legacy - Alan Lomax Collection: Portrait (Rounder CD 1800). Her brother, Hobart Smith, accompanies her on guitar.
Mike Yates: According to John Cohen, Alan Lomax considered Texas Gladden to have been, 'one of the best American ballad singers ever recorded'. Elsewhere, Lomax wrote, 'Texas Gladden sings in such fine style. With such fire and, at the same time, with such restrained good taste'. Over the years a few tracks by this Virginian singer have appeared on a number of 78s and LP anthologies. Now we have a whole CDs worth of material so that, at last, we are able to see whether or not Lomax's praise was right and justified.
Texas Gladden was born in 1895 in Saltville, a small town in the south-western corner of Virginia. She had a known repertoire of some two hundred songs, all of which she visualized during her performances. "I have a perfect mental picture of every song I sing. I have a perfect picture of every person I learned it from, very few people I don't remember. When I sing a song, a person pops up, and it's a very beautiful story. I can see Mary Hamilton, I can see where the old Queen came down to the kitchen, can see them all gathered around, and I can hear her tell Mary Hamilton to get ready. I can see the whole story, I can see them as they pass through the gate, I can see the ladies looking over their casements, I can see her when she goes up the Parliament steps, and I can see her when she goes to the gallows. I can hear her last words, and I can see all, just the most beautiful picture." This is a fascinating insight and reminds me of something that John Cohen once said about Walter Pardon, namely that Walter's life was 'encapsulated within the world of the ballads'. And the same, I think, may be said of Texas Gladden. Here was a singer whose life was infused with her songs and ballads.
Collectors such as Alfreda Peel, Arthur Kyle Davis and Richard Chase recorded songs from her throughout the 1930s. Alan Lomax first recorded her, on behalf of the Library of Congress, in 1941. Fourteen of the fifteen songs recorded in 1941 are included on this album. In 1946 Lomax invited Texas and her brother, Hobart Smith, to New York where they performed in a concert held at Columbia University. While in New York they also recorded a number of interviews with Lomax and extracts from some of these interviews are also included. Lomax introduced Texas to Moe Asch, who recorded enough material from her to fill three 78s, which he issued on his Disc label. This material is also included here in its entirety. Texas Gladden: Ballad Legacy also includes a couple of tracks recorded by Lomax when he returned to Virginia in 1959, as part of his Southern Journey project. In all, there are thirty-seven tracks, comprising nine classic ballads (including two versions of The Devil and the Farmer's Wife - the first recorded by Lomax in 1941, the second recorded by an unknown person at the National Folk Festival in Washington, in 1938), six extracts from interviews, eleven songs from the Anglo-American tradition, fragments of a further nine songs, plus, finally, one spoken ghost story.
Texas Gladden is perhaps best known as a ballad singer. This was, after all, the way that Lomax presented her to the 'outside' world. And, yes, she was a very good ballad singer indeed. On the CDs opening track, The Devil and the Farmer's Wife, she is accompanied by Hobart Smith on guitar, who plays melody - rather than chords - behind his sister's voice, and the effect is simply stunning.]
THE FARMER'S CURST WIFE
(Child, No. 278)
Of the group of ballads concerned with the humorous treatment of married life, "The Farmer's Curst Wife" appears to be the most popular. "Our Goodman" treats marital infidelity lightly; "Get up and Bar the Door" (not represented in this volume, but found in TBVA) depicts comically a domestic battle of wits; "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" jestingly suggests a safe method of wife taming; and now "The Farmer's Curst Wife" comments in amusing hyperbole upon a wife's invincible shrewishess.
A farmer who has a bad wife is glad to have the Devil take her rather than his eldest son (oxen, himself), away to hell. But in hell she is as incorrigible as ever, kicking or murdering young imps until one of them urges the Devil to take her back to her husband before she murders them all. This he does, and philosophic remarks about the nature of women often end the ballad. Child prints only two versions, one English (A) and one Scottish (B), to much tire same effect, except that A has "a chorus of whistlers" instead of the nonsense refrains of B, and B has a final stanza in which the woman on her return asks for the food she had left cooking when she went away years before. Child calls attention to a similar ballad composed by Robert Burns "from the old traditional version," but does not print the composed version, though it may be partly traditional. Child prints a traditional tune for B (V, 423).
The ballad seems to be extremely rare in recent British tradition only three English counties seem to have reported in Sussex, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire. See JEFSS, II (1905-6), 184-85; III (1908-9), 131-32; and Alfred Williams, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923, p. 211. Alfred Williams gives as the title of his Wiltshire text without tune, "There Was an Old Farmer in Sussex
Did Dwell," its first line, and adds a note, "This is called the 'Sussex Whistling Song,' but whether it originated in Sussex, or elsewhere, it was very popular in the Thames valley eighty years ago" (in 1923). The text is practically identical with Child A. which, under the title of "The Farmer's Old Wife," was taken from Dixon's Ancient Poems, Ballads, and songs of the Peasantry of England, 1846. Twentieth-century Scotland seems to muster only a single tune, without words, of this ballad (Greig-Keith, p. 220).
Miss Broadwood has an extremely interesting note on whistling refrains in general and on this ballad in particular in JEFSS, V (1914-17), 208-9. "I think . . . that it has not yet been pointed out by anyone that in song, where the devil is openly mentioned there is usually a rude , nonsense refrain, and in some cases the company whistles after each verse. Whistling is, of course, intimately connected. with magic, and to whistle is to keep away, or put oneself on a comfortable footing with, the dreaded power I venture, therefore, to think that in the very old song of 'The Farmer's Old Wife' or 'The Devil and the Ploughman,' still so popular throughout our Islands, the whistling after each verse was intended to keep Satan at a distance." For the lore about whistling and nonsense- refrains we are most grateful, but "still so popular throughout our Islands"? The published record scarcely sustains this statement.
In America both texts and tunes are far more abundant and widely scattered. TBVa printed thirteen texts (of fifteen available and six tunes. FSVa describes eight items more recently added, with five tunes. In addition to Virginia, the following states have been heard from, usually with a number of versions: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska. The ballad has also been found in Nova Scotia. Sampling of a few representative collections yields the following result- rather less impressive than one would have expected: Barry, five texts and one tune; Cox, one text, no tune; Sharp-Karpeles, Seven texts, seven tunes; Belden, two texts, no tune; Randolph, two texts, one tune; Brown, two texts, four tunes ; Eddy, no text or tune; Gardner-Chickering, five texts, two tunes; and so on.
The American texts and tunes of this ballad are so extremely complicated, by multiplicity and variation, that any effort to classify them would be a major undertaking and of doubtful validity. Barry (p. 332) has taken the trouble to piece together the story of the five Maine texts, but the result is of little value as to the Maine texts, and of less value outside them. Barry also tells a good anecdote somewhat paralieling the ballad story. He also would wish to make more of the demonological implications of the ballad. Comparing it to the former "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin," he comments, "In the former the demon is exorcised; in the latter, he meets his match in the person of the cursed wife herself." And as to the present ballad, he concludes: "The cursed wife mav be regarded as a stock character of medieval stories; but this particular ballad is probably steeped more deeply in demonology than appears from the fragments we have left of the tale." Yes, but we have a superb song left, with or without demonological implications. And America is preserving it, in the usual fashion of varying it by oral circulation, in rnany out-of-the-way places. Belden (p. 95), on the basis of two or three American texts which have the little devils "dancing on a wire," suggests a relationship to old mystery plays. But the expression does not occur in the Virginia texts.
The present eight versions or variants are essentially an extension of the TBVa material, but with five good tunes (AA-EE),
especially the three (AA-CC) transcribed from phonograph records, and with many varying details, refrains, and wordings. No whistling refrains have been added, like those in Child A and in TBVa C, D, F, and L. In general, the texts look to Child A (except for its chorus of whistlers) rather than B, but occasional details point rather toward B. Naturally, the resemblance to American texts is closer, but not too close. None of the more recent texts has the detail found in Child B and in TBVa A, in which the returned wife asks for the food she has left cooking long ago. BB (stanza 11) seems to be the only text in which the returned wife beats her sick husband (Coffin's Story Type F). Coffin's Story Typ. A would cover most of these versions, with occasional glances at other types. The old man's plowing with cattle or pigs (Coffin's Story Type C) appears in AA, CC, HH, but the pact between the devil and the man is seldom made clear. The individual headnotes call attention to some specific points of interest. In general, the variation concerns the beginning and the ending, and, of course, the refrains, no two of which are alike. The final moral, whether or not a part of the original ballad, is infinitely varied and always amusing. All told, this ballad seems to be one of the better examples of ballad variation.
AA. "Two Little Devils." Phonograph record (aluminum) rnacle by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Mrs. Texas Gladden, of near Roanoke, Va. Roanoke County. August 2, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by G. W. Williams. Mrs. Gladden's strong, accurate, melodious voice does full justice to the lilting rhythms of the jolly song.
1. There was an old man who owned a large farm,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
There was an old man who owned a large farm,
He had no horses to plow his land,
With his twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.
2. Then he hooked up the sow and the cow to the plow,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then he hooked up the sow and the cow to the plow,
And turned the sod the devil knows how,
With his twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi durn'
3 Then the devil came to the old man one day,
Fi do, fi diddle fi dum,
Then the devil came to the old man one day,
Says, "One of your family I'll sure take away,"
With my twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.
4 Then said the old man, "Now surely I'm done,"
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then said the old man, "Now surely I'm done,
For the devil's done come for my oldest son,"
With his twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, h dum"
5. "It's not your oldest son I crave,"
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
"It's not your oldest son I crave,
But your old scolding wife I'll sure take away,"
With my twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum"
6. "Then take her away with all o' your heart,"
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
"Then take her away with all o' your heart,
I hope from hell she never does part,"
With a twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.
7. Then he shouldered her up all on his back,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then he shouldered her up all on his back,
And off to hell he went clickety clack,
With his twice fi do, fi do, fi diddie, fi dum.
8. He set her down at old hell's gate,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
He set her down at old hell's gate,
And there he made the old gal walk straight,
With his twice fi do, fi do, fi diddie, fi dum.
9 Then two little devils come rattlin' their chains,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Two little devils come rattlin' their chains,
She off with her slipper and knocked out their brains,
With a twice fi clo, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.
10 Then two little devils peeped over the wall,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then two little devils peeped over the wall,
Says, "Take her back daddy, she'll murder us all,"
With a twice fi do, fi do,'fi diddle, fi dum.
11 Then he shouldered her up all on his back,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then he shouldered her up all on his back,
Like an old fool he went luggin, her back,
With his twice fi do, fi di, fi diddle, fi dum.
12 Then said the old man, "we're bound for a curse,"
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then said the old man, "we're bound for a curse,
For she's been to hell and she's ten times worse,"
With a twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.
13 Then surely the women are worse than the men,
Fi do, fi diddle, fi dum,
Then surely the women are worse than the men,
For they've been to hell and come back again,
With a twice fi do, fi do, fi diddle, fi dum.