Two Little Sisters- (NC) pre1943 Brown D
[My title. Fragment from The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, 1952 which is one of the better US collections and has nine versions - five with music examples.
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 Paul G. Brewster, who has made an intensive study (as yet unpublished) of this ballad, believes that, as ballad, it is definitely Scandinavian in origin, starting in Norway some time before the seventeenth century and spreading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), Scotand, 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.
D. 'Two Little Sisters.' A single stanza, in Dr. Brown's hand, probably taken down from some student's recitation. The refrain varies slightly from that in A and that in B, but is still basically the same.
Two little sisters living in the west
Sing a dinii, sing a day
Two little sisters living in the west
The boys all bound for me
Two little sisters living in the west,
The young man loved the younger best.
And I'll be true to my true love
Because she's true to me.