Up in a Dark Hollow (2)- N. Hensley (KY) 1917 Sharp I
[My title. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, I, 1934 edition; collected by Cecil J. Sharp, edited Karpeles. Comprising two hundred and seventy-four Songs and Ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight Tunes; Including thirty-nine Tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Karpeles and Sharps notes follow.
The text is identical to the version (Sharp H) by Mrs. Sophie Annie Hensley (apparently Nasncy's mother) collected the same day. Here's Sharp's Diary excerpt: Sharp diary 1917 page 237. Friday 17 August 1917 - Oneida, Kentucky
Breakfast at 5.30! and then start off, cross Goose Creek in a boat about 2 miles down the river and call on a Mr Geo Brewer, a garrulous old man of 70 who regales us with War Songs made by his father, but who knows nothing folk. Find people about here giving up folk-singing very much like the people about Manchester. Call on Mrs and her daughter Mrs Dora Robertson, nice people who give us dinner but utterly outside the folk- cult. Then to Mrs Sophie Annie Hensley and her daughter from whom we get good things including Johnnie Scot. On our return have to wait an hour or more to get ferried across Goose Creek! In the evening I address the students on the Campus and sing them many songs which seems to please everyone very much. Some of the students must surely know a good many songs.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes; No. 31. Sir Hugh.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 155. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 539. Baring-Gould's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, pp. 92 and 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 120 (see also further references). Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 293 ; xxix. 164; xxxix. 108.
Texts with tunes :—M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes, p. 46. English County Songs, p. 86. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 264. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 46. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, xvii, tune No. 7. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 582. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 68 (published also in English Folk-Songs, Selected Edition, i. 22, and One Hundred English Folk- Songs, p. 22). Newell's Games and Songs of American Children, p. 76. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 148. D. Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. 53-5. Musical Quarterly, January 1916, p. 15. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxxv. 344; xxxix, 213. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 400 and 587.
I. [Up A Dark Hollow.] Sung by MRS. NANCY ALICE HENSLEY at Oneida, Clay Co., Ky., Aug. 17, 1917. Pentatonic. Mode 3 (Tonic G).
Up in a dark hollow,
Where the dew drops never fall,
Every scholar in that school
Went out to playing ball, ball,
Went out to playing ball.