US & Canada Versions 7R. Yon Green Valley- Roud 2125 (Green Valley; Early in the Spring)
[The "green valley" is a popular location found in ballads from North America whether it's "The Lone Green Valley" of "The Jealous Lover" or "As the dew flies over the green valley" a refrain in "Farmer's Curst Wife." The first extant version of "Yon Green Valley" was published by Phillips Barry in volume 22 of the JAF in 1909. Included in his article on Irish Come All Ye's was a version he titled "Early in the Spring" that he collected from a native of County Tyrone then living in Boston. Although Barry version is the only one sung from the male perspective (the ballad is about a maid, courted by a false lover, who becomes pregnant and is abandoned) it is still evidence that the ballad was known in Ireland in the 1800s.
This rare ballad has been found only[1] in Canada-- both in Maritime Canada and New Brunswick where it has been passed among the Miramichi people and sung at their music festivals in the 1950s and 60s. One family version sung by Marie Hare and recorded by Sandy Paton at a Miramichi Festival in the 1960s was known by family members back in the 1920s[2]. In the 1950s a number of versions were found in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
The ballad is loosely related to the Died for Love songs from which its theme is taken. Only two stanzas found in Died for Love songs have been recovered in Canada; the "Must I Go Bound?" stanza which is standard in Green Valley and a stanza of "I Wish I Wish." Other stanzas found in Green Valley have been heavily modified but resemble "Colour of Amber" found in Newfoundland and "Brisk Young Sailor."
The ballad was popularized by the Canadian folk duo Ian & Sylvia who included a cover of Marie Hare's version on their Northern Journey LP (Vanguard) in 1964.
For more detailed information see Main Headnotes.
R. Matteson 2017]
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Footnotes:
1. This doesn't count the unusual version from Barry which was learned by his informant in Ireland but was collected in Boston. There is also a recording made by Lomax in 1938 from an Irish singer in Michigan, titled "Green Valley" which may or may not be the same song.
2. This information about the Whitney family was provided by Louise Manny in Songs of the Miramichi.
CONTENTS:
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[Random notes/versions]
Ian & Sylvia were a Canadian folk and country music duo
Northern Journey (Vanguard) CD 1964 [cover song of Marie Hare]
GREEN VALLEY LYRICS by IAN & SYLVIA:
Oh the first young man that came courting me
I'll make no doubt that he loved me
With his false heart and his flattering tongue
He was the first to entice me when I was young.
Oh the first six months his love proved kind
Until at last he changed his mind
Saying "My parents call and I must obey
So it's good-bye love, I am going away".
I will hold you fast, I'll not let you go
For you are mine by rights, you know
Fulfill those vows that you made to me
As the bright sun rose on Green Valley.
It was on this book love you made me swear
And those few lines you soon shall hear
That no other marriage was I ne'er to make
With no other man all for your sake
Now must I go bound while he goes free
Must I love a man that don't love me
And must I play the childish part
And love a man who has broke my heart.
I will sing one verse and I'll sing no more
Since the boy has gone that I adore
I will change my mind like the wavering wind
And depend no more on false mankind.
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This Newfoundland version is similar but it's a different song. From "Never Had a Word Between Us": Pattern in the Verbal Art of a Newfoundland Woman by Debora G. Kodish - 1981 p. 102
Floro, on the Lovely Banks of Bine
Down in yon green valley that lies far away,
Where me and my bonny boy spent manys a pleasant day
Where me and my bonny boy spent manys a pleasant time
He soon proved false to Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
I loves him very dearly, it's more than tongue can tell.
Down in my father's garden he first won the heart of mine.
His heart proved false to Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
When he came a courting me he promised me he'd wed
And when he had my favor gained was far from me he fled.
His love it flew like morning dew wherever the sun do shine,
He soon forgot young Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
I loves him very dearly, it's more than tongue can tell.
Down in my father's garden he first won the heart of mine.
His heart proved false to Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
When I heard this false young man to London had gone away.
I packed up all my jewelry all on that very day.
To flee from friends and parents in search of him to find.
I'll forsake my father's dwelling on the lovely banks of Bine.
Straight way I posted unto fair London town.
I heard my love was married to a lady of reknown.
You well may guess my feelings, I mean no ill design.
Think on unhappy Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
Down in yon green valley that lies so far away.
Where me and my bonny boy spent manys the pleasant day.
Where me and my bonny boy spent manys the pleasant time.
He soon proved false to Floro on the lovely banks of Bine.
Remember now, we calls to mind, those days are past and gone.
When young unhappy Floro deserted from her home.
To flee from friends and parents and now in sorrow find
Those leathern walls and iron bars far from the banks of Bine.
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Notes from Folk Legacy CD: "Marie Hare, Strathadam, New Brunswick, Canada"
General Remarks on Marie Hare's Singing
by Edward D. Ives
Of the eleven ballads and songs appearing on this record, seven are part of the common British-American tradition. Of the four remaining, three - "Gerry's Rock," "Billy Grimes," and "Peter Emberly," are from general native American tradition (unless we want to call the last one a local song), and one, "The Banks of the Miramichi," is by a local song writer. The imported songs are all of the later or "broadside" tradition; there are no Child ballads. Child ballads are found in tradition along the Miramichi, but they are not popular; I have had several men sing versions of them for me and then tell me they "don't much care for that sort of song." The broadside tradition is clearly the norm, and Marie's record shows this well. Then, too, it shows the preference for story-songs, in that all but three (numbers 1, 2, and 6) are ballads and even the first two lyrics imply a narrative background.
Love is the great theme, and tragic love of some kind is the norm. Only one ("Billy Grimes") could be called a cheerful song. Death is not far behind as a favorite topic. Of the three murders we have here, one man kills his daughter, and another his true love, both to avoid an impending marriage. Two of the ballads are "woods songs," and they both deal with violent death — one in the lumberwoods, the other on the river-drive. Love and death! Only Pat Hurley's little lyric, "The Banks of the Miramichi," does not touch either of these two strings. Again, Marie's repertoire is normal.
In prosody, seven of the ballads make use of the double stanza (four 7-foot lines rhyming aabb). Two, "The Maid of the East" and "Billy Grimes," use the ballad stanza (4343, abcb), while the two love songs use a long metre stanza (4.4. 4.4. aabb). In "Green Grows the Laurel" a trisyllabic foot is used; the poetic metre is duple in all the other pieces, but this metre is often cross-cut by the triple metre of the music.
Moving on to the music itself and taking up scales first, we find that six of the pieces are clearly major. "Gerry's Rock" is hexatonic. There are no pure (i.e., uninflected) modal tunes. "The Banks of the Miramichi" has a mixolydian feel to it, but it is hexatonic and has the raised seventh in places. "Peter Emberly" is mixolydian except for the raised seventh in the cadence. There are two pentatonic tunes: "The Maid of the East" and "Billy Grimes."
However, it should be pointed out (as it was pointed out to me by Norman Cazden) that such mechanical scale-counts may obscure as much as they reveal. A good number of hexatonic and heptatonic tunes show a basic pentatonic structure by emphasizing certain degrees of the scale and frequently skipping others, and this fact may be much more important than the mere presence of, say, the raised seventh in any of them. (See, for example, "Green-Grows the Laurel," "The Jam on Gerry's Rock," "The Banks of the Miramichi," and "Peter Emberly.")
As for range, only three pieces exceed a minor ninth (actually, the octave plus the leading tone).
All but three of the tunes are built of two phrases, and the favorite arrangement of these phrases is cyclic (ABBA or ABCA). The upbeat opening is everywhere, and the cadential pattern in which the final is anticipated in the next-to-last measure (usually followed by the leading tone) is present in every song but two ("The Maid of the East" and "Billy Grimes"). Wilson noticed this pattern and attributed it to the strong Irish heritage of Miramichi singers (see Bibliography; his p. 105).
This record also shows us some of the "workhorse" or general utility tunes popular in the Northeast. "Peter Emberly" and "The Banks of the Miramichi" are popular tunes that are used for several other songs, but we have some extremely interesting problems when we come to the tunes for "Patrick O'Donnell," "Gerry's Rock," "The Wexford Lass," and "Jenny Dear." The notes will go into more detail, but only measure-by-measure comparison can show how complex the interrelationships can be. Questions will inevitably ask themselves: At what point can we say we are dealing with separate tunes and not merely with different sets of the same tune? When does a singer (or a community) consider one tune as different from or the same as another? How do singers identify tunes? Do singers have "personal" utility tunes in the same way that areas do? And so on.
There are several traditional formulae that I might point out. Three of the ballads are in straight confessional form, two of them having the opening "naming" stanza. And "Mantle So Green" and "Jenny Dear" begin with the beloved "As I walked out" formula, also popular in French folksong. About a third of the pieces end with a moral stanza, and several more hint at it.
Everything I have said documents a conclusion we could pretty safely jump to: Marie's repertoire (insofar as this record is any sample of it, and it is) is heavily in debt to the later or British broadside tradition, whose favorite pattern is a double stanza with a cyclic tune (usually ABBA) on the subject of love or violent death, with a formulistic opening and a moralizing close. Although it is harder to prove, the evidence also indicates a strong Irish element within this tradition. The two pieces that fit this stereotype least well (at least formally) are, of course, "The Maid of the East" and "Billy Grimes," which thus seem to owe allegiance to quite a separate tradition from that of the others.
I am tempted to say English as opposed to Irish tradition, but I don't think it is all that simple.
A few comments on Marie's singing style. She keeps a rather steady rhythm, occasionally getting over toward parlando-rubato, but I would not call it her basic style. She uses ornamentation sparingly, limiting herself to single grace notes and slides, usually up to and away from high notes. I find it interesting that she speaks none of her endings on this record, while she used to do it all the time in her Festival performances. (Louise Manny says that Marie sang the endings for the Patons, instead of speaking them, because she thought the Patons would like the songs better with the endings sung.) It is no less interesting to see her break away from traditionally dramatic performance in "Billy Grimes." In the 1962 Festival, the expression was not only in her voice, she all but acted the song out on the stage.
Marie also often sustains the opening upbeat of a stanza to upwards of a full measure, a common feature in lumber-camp style as I have heard it. If this upbeat is a vowel, she is likely to precede it with an "n," so that "as" will become "nnas," for example, and this too seems to be a usual enough feature of woods style.
Side 1, Band 1
Green Valley
(Ives) The girl who sings of her faithless lover and her broken heart is certainly a folksong fixture, but, while the stereotype is common, this particular song does not seem to be common at all. The only published variants I know of are the two in Helen Creighton's Maritime Folk Songs (p. 86), one of which came from Nova Scotia, the other from New Brunswick. Both have the stanzas in different order, and stanza 5 appears in neither. That stanza appears in other contexts, though, particularly in a song known as "The Blue-Eyed Boy" (see Brewster, p. 339; Henry, p. 51). There is a song, "Green Valley," collected by Alan Lomax in Beaver Island, Michigan, in 1938 (LC 2297 Al), and Bascom Lunsford sings a version of a song called "Must I Go Bound" (LC 1784 A3). Wilson (pp. 23, 67) prints a variant of the song as sung by Marie's brother, Harold Whitney, which, while obviously the "same song," is different enough in both words and tune to make an interesting comparison. Marie also sang this song in the 1958 Festival (see ATL 2175.5), the only important difference being that she spoke the last words.
(Manny) This song of the forsaken sweetheart was a great favorite of the Whitney family, and it was much sung by others in Strathadam. Marie's brother, Willie, who died in 1925, was fond of singing it, but Marie is not sure where he learned it. Every year the young men of Strathadam went west for the harvesting, and brought home songs, but this is not necessarily one of them. May MacLean, Jared's sister, sang it.
O, the first young man that came courting me,
I'll make no doubt that he loved me,
With his false heart and his flattering tongue,
He was the first to entice me when I was young,
0, the first six months his love proved kind,
Until at last he changed his mind.
Saying, "My parents call, and I must obey,
So it's goodbye, love, I am going away."
"I will hold you fast, I'll not let you go,
For you are mine by right, you know;
Fulfill those vows that you made to me
As the bright sun rose on Green Vallee.
"It was on this book, love, you made me swear,
And those few lines you soon shall hear,
That no other marriage was I ne'er to make,
With no other young man, all for your sake.
"Now, must I go bound while he goes free?
Must I love a man that don't love me?
Or must I act a childish part
And love a man who has broke my heart?
"O, I must not think of his curly hair,
His cherries lips nor his wav 'ring curls,
With his fond heart and his flattering tongue,
He was the first to entice me when I was young.
"It was on the green, love, where we sat down,
Nothing but small birds came fluttering round,
Changing their notes from tree to tree,
As the bright sun rose on Green Vallee.
"I will sing one verse, and I'll sing no more,
Since the boy has gone that I adore.
I will change my mind like the wavering wind,
And I'll depend no more on false mankind. "
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Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S166290)
First Line: Has yon green valley been closed all around
Source: Creighton, Maritime Folk Songs (1961) pp.86-87 (version a)
Performer: Gilkie, William
Date: 1951 (Sep)
Place: Canada : Nova Scotia : Sambro
Collector: Creighton, Helen
Roud No: 2125
The Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S385011)
First Line:
Source: Helen Creighton collection (Nova Scotia Archives) AR 5978 / 3792
Performer: Whitney, Harold
Date: 1960
Place: Canada : New Brunswick : Strathadam
Collector: Creighton, Helen
Roud No: 2125
Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S389595)
First Line: O catch him fast and don't let him go
Source: Memorial University Folklore Archive (MUNFLA) (St. John's, Newfoundland) acc. 78-274
Performer:
Date:
Place:
Collector:
Roud No: 2125
Subjects: The narrator swore to love one man only, on the book.
Yon Green Vallee
Roud Folksong Index (S270882)
First Line: Yon green vallee has been closed all round
Source: Helen Creighton collection (Nova Scotia Archives) AR 5440 / AC 2306 / 1964
Performer: Gilkie, William
Date: 1951 (Sep)
Place: Canada : Nova Scotia : Sambro
Collector: Creighton, Helen
Roud No: 2125
Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S389641)
First Line: O catch him fast and don't let him go
Source: Memorial University Folklore Archive (MUNFLA) (St. John's, Newfoundland) acc. 78-274 / tape C4365B / counter 252 / MS p.41
Performer: Walsh, Lon
Date: 1977 (13 Jul)
Place: Canada : Newfoundland : St. Mary's
Collector: Burke, Anne
Subjects: The narrator swore to love one man only, on the Book.
Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S389627)
First Line: O catch him fast and don't let him go
Source: Memorial University Folklore Archive (MUNFLA) (St. John's, Newfoundland) acc. 78-274 / tape C4365 / counter 141-B
Performer: Walsh, Lon
Date: 1977 (Jul)
Place: Canada : Newfoundland : St. Mary's
Collector: Burke, Anne
Roud No: 2125
Subjects: A woman calls for her man to be caught, so that he can confirm the vows he's made to her by swearing on the book. Love is called hard since she's lost her heart and will marry only him.
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The Journal of American Folk-lore, Volume 22, Parts 3-4
Barry-- Irish Come-all -Ye's
1. Early early all in the spring,
When gentle small birds begin to sing,
Changing their notes from tree to tree,
As the sun arose over yon green valley.
2. For six long months my love she did prove kind,
And then six after, she changed her mind,
Saying "Farewell, darling, I must away,
You know my parents I must obey!"
3. He held her fast, he would not let her go,
Saying, "Mary, Mary, my mind you know,
Fulfil those vows you made to me,
As the sun arose over yon green valley !"
4. "It was on a book, love, you made me swear,
If you read these few lines, you'll find it there,
That I can't marry, nor no one take,
Nor when you're dead, love none for your sakel"
5. "I'll think no more of her yellow hair, ...
Her two black eyes are beyond compare,
Her cherry cheeks, and her flattering tongue,
It was it beguiled me when I was young!"
6. Down in yon valley all closed around,
There's nothing there, but the small birds' sound,
I sing one verse, and I sing no more,
Since the girl has left me that I adore!
I change my mind like the waving wind,
And I'll dote no more on false womankind!
1 "Early In the Spring," A, Folk-Songs of the North Atlantic Stales, from S. C, Boston, Mass., native of Co. Tyrone. Except in the last stanza, repeat third and fourth lines as refrain. I
* The presence of this stanza connects the ballad with the Rcturned-Lover cycle. A
A fragment, sung by S. C. to a melody closely similar, may well be from another version of this ballad:—
[music]
Oh, the rose is red, and the laurel's green,
And my love's face it might serve a queen;
The drop of honey in the morning dew
Was not half so sweet as one kiss from you.
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Missing Versions:
Green Valley
Lomax, Alan -- 1915-2002 (recordist)
Green, J. W. (singer)
Created / Published
St. James, Beaver Island, Michigan.
Subject Headings
- United States of America -- Michigan -- St. James, Beaver Island
Notes
- Sung by J. W. Green. (statement of responsibility)
- AFC 1939/007 (AFC Number)
- AFS 02297 A01 (AFS Number)
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Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S166293)
First Line: She held him fast
Source: Edith Fowke Coll. (FO 24)
Performer: MacDonald, Mrs. John A.
Date: 1961 (Nov)
Place: Canada : Ontario : Cornwall
Collector: Fowke, Edith
Roud No: 2125
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Yon Green Valley
Roud Folksong Index (S166292)
First Line: Young man courted me most earnestly, A
Source: Edith Fowke Coll. (FO 22)
Performer: Fraser, Mrs. Arlie
Date: 1964 (Oct)
Place: Canada : Ontario : Lancaster
Collector: Fowke, Edith
Roud No: 2125