Two Little Girls- Sims (WV) pre1931 Buchanan
[From BFSSNE, Vol. 12, 1935, by Phillips Barry. According to Buchanan, father of the informant, J. Levi Sims, was of Irish descent, born in Aiken County, SC, later moving to Walker Mountain area, north of Marion Virginia, where Levi was born. Grandfather Sims was born near Belfast Ireland.
This is the first documented version of "Oh, the wind and the rain," which presumably dates back through the family to the mid-1800s. I'll need to do some genealogy work to determine a documented age- since Sims learned it as a child. Several traditional versions have been found-- the next would be Dan Tate 1941, then Kilby Snow (1969 but learned in 1913). These were followed by a number of covers by the Armstrongs, Red Clay Ramblers, Jody Stecher and the Grateful Dead.
This is one of a half dozen versions collected in North American that use what Barry calls the "resuscitation-ritual" where the dead girls body and hair are used to make a fiddle or harp. In the early British versions (Child A-D, for example) the instrument plays a songs that reveals the murderous sister. In North America, the fiddle plays, "Oh, the wind and the rain."
Following are the extensive notes by Phillips Barry, the esteemed editor of The Bulletin. Sadly this would be his last edition and this might be the last article he wrote as he died in 1937, bringing an end to the BFSSNE.
R. Matteson 2014]
THE TWO SISTERS
(Child 10)
From Rev. J. L. Sims, Pageton, West Virginia, and his daughter, Mrs. Elziebell Ferguson, Marion, Smyth County, Virginia. Collected by Miss Annabel Morris Buchanan, Marion, Va., Oct. 13, 1931. Text printed in Adventures in Virginia Folkways Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 31, 1936.
1 Two little girls in a boat one day--
Oh, the wind and rain--
Two little girls in a boat one day,
Crying, oh, the wind and rain.
2 They floated down on the old mill dam-
Oh, the wind and rain-
They floated down on the old mill dam,
Crying, oh, the wind and rain.
3 Charles Miller came out with his long hook and line, etc.
4 He hooked her out by the long yellow hair, etc.
5 He made fiddle strings of her long yellow hair, etc.
6 He made fiddle screws of her long finger bones, etc.
7 And the only tune the fiddle would play, etc.
Mr. Sims was born in Marion, Virginia, and lived there until a few years ago, when he moved to West Virginia. He learned
the song as a child, from his own people, as I remember.
ANNIBEL MORRIS BUCHANAN,
Marion, Virginia
This version of The Two Sisters is unique: it is perhaps the most primitive that has survived in English tradition. It is one of three American versions that have kept the resuscitation-ritual (FSSNE., 10, 2-4): the other two being Sharp-Karpeles A (I, 26), and Henry C (JAFL, XLV, 7) neither of which, however, in the confused account of events that they give, has retained the lover as the agent of the ritual. Traditionally, it is important also in that it enables us to unify the Old English (Child A, L) and the Anglo-American sub-groups of texts.
We have shown that the earliest treatment of the theme made the sisters three, and their brother the agent of the ritual (FSSNE., 10, 2-4). By fission, the character of the brother emerges as two persons, brother and lover: compare the Scoto-Irish Child C*, 27--obtained by Sir Walter Scott from the Irish historian J. C. Walker, Icelandic A (S. Grundtvig and J. Sigurdson, Islensk Fornkvaedi, pp- 87, ff.) of the 17th century, is the oldest version making the lover find the corpse and construct the symbolic body:
16 Bidillin Eekk a sandi,
Thar likiil rak ad la'ndi;
17 Hann tok hennar hvita hold:
Grof hann thad i vigda mold;
18 Hann tok hennar gula har,
Gjiirdi ur horpustrengi thrja.
("The wooer walked on the sand:
there the body came to land;
he has taken her white lichame
And buried it in the moist mould;
he taken her golden hair,
made of it three harp-strings.")
In Old, English A (Child A), 7, the miller finds the body and makes of it the magical harp, as also in Old English Be (Cf. Le, ESPB, VIII, 418), of which texts, the former was printed in 1666, the latter traced traditionally to 1747. Both have been vulgarized to the comic; Child La, Lb, more than Lc, but this fact does not invalidate their evidence for the development of the theme, as is shown very clearly by Lb, 9, 14 (Hughes, The Scouring of the White Horse, pp. 228-9):
1: He laid his fiddle on a shelf
In that old manor-hall,
It played and, sung all by itself,
And thus sung his fid-doll: . . . "
14: Now when this fiddle thus had spoke
It fell upon the floor,
And into little pieces broke,
No word spoke never more.
(Compare Esthonian: FSSNE., 10, 2, Swedish C, Grundtvig, DgF, II, 840, in which the breaking of the harp, the symbolic body, is followed by the resurrection of the young sister). More clearly, however, than in either Old English A, or Old English B, is the miller- personalized as Chirles Miller--implied the lover of the younger sister in Mr. Sims's version. The Aberdeenshire Scottish tradition, Child M; Greig, Last Leaves, pp. 9-73, 250-51, names the miller as the lover, also Barry A, of the Anglo-American tradition (JAFL., XVIII, 130):
The miller, he loved the youngest one,
But he was loved by the eldest one.
It is thus in keeping with the old English form of the theme, that in Barry A, the miller --the lover of the younger sister
--should find her body.
The reason for making the miller the lover in Old English and Anglo-American tradition may be circumstantial to the locale of the ballad. The younger sister is "taken for a walk"--an old, popular euphemism for premeditated murder-- to "the sea brym" (Child A, 1); till sajafar floda "a tidal inlet" (Icelandic A, 3), a "navigable ship-channel, with deep water and strong current, was suitable for a mill-site, with a good, chance that a body, caught in the undertow, might be sucked into the sluiceway, to be found by the miller. Since the early tradition of Icelandic A makes the lover find the body, the miller and the lover were made the same person in the Old English tradition. Only in later tradition, the Scottish Child H, and the Anglo-American tradition exclusive of Barry A, is the miller, no longer the lover, because of the knavery of English lllers generally, reduced to the part of the villain (FSSNE., 11, 16). Unique in the tradition of the ballad is the refrain: compare "with hey, ho, the wind and the rain" (Twelfth Night, Epilogue, sung by the Clown; King Lear, The Fool's Song, III, 21 74, ff.).
Mr. Sim's melody is musicologically rather puzzling. It is regressive - in its tonality (see above, p. 5), yet in the first and last phrase, shows clear affinities with the music to the Scoto-Irish tradition of The Two Sisters (FSSNE., 9, 4; 10, 10-11; JFSS., II, 285) which, in the present state of our knowledge, we regard as a re-creation of the Scando-Scotic air Binnorie. Moreover, it appears related to a large sub-group, traditional in Britain and America. The oldest set of this group, Ladie Cassiles Lilt (Skene MS., ed. W. Dauney, Old Scottish Melodies, p. 228) by its amtivalent cadence, la-do'-sol, conditioned the traditional development as either la-do, or la-sol. Compare, for example, The Gupsy Laddie, J. Johnson, The Scots Musical Museum, No. 181 (regressive set); Watlen, Johny Faa, or, The Gypsy Laddie (normal set; identical, except for the closing note).
We are forced to the conclusion that the number of originally distinct British folk melodies is small; increasing, however, traditionally, through what may be called secondary differentiation.
P. B.