Well Sold The Cow- Henneberry (NS) 1932 Creighton
[Read, Case Study of Ben Henneberry, on my site. Here are excerpts from The Creighton-Senior Collaboration, 1932-51 and Helen Creighton and the Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia, both by David Gregory:
Helen Creighton and the Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia
From another family at South-East Passage, the Faulkners, who had relatives living on nearby Devil's Island, Helen not only obtained such local songs as . "Back Bay Hill" and "Canso Strait" and Irish songs like "Tim Finnigan's Wake", she also found out
about the island's most famous singer, Ben Henneberry. Perhaps because of their isolated dwelling place, the Henneberrys were a singing family par excellence, and Ben's son Edmund would eventually inherit his father's huge repertoire and sing selections from it for Helen on CBC radio. In 1928-29, however, it was Ben, the family patriarch, who was Helen's most prolific informant, contributing several dozen songs. Helen gave this account on collecting on Devil's Island:
Devil's Island is one mile in circumference and never more than eleven feet above sea level. At that time there were seventeen houses there, fourteen of which were occupied. The inhabitants were of English, Irish and Welsh descent and the Henneberrys, whose name was predominant, probably came with Alexander McNutt early in the nineteenth century when he brought 300 Irish settlers over. Fishing was their occupation and they found their catch in waters near at hand. They also had a government lifeboat of which Mr. Ben was coxswain... I realized that if I wanted songs I must go to the island and stay, so... I asked Mrs. Faulkner if she would board me. Then came one of the most strenuous weeks I've ever spent...In the morning, Mr. Ben, so called to distinguish him from all the other Henneberrys, would sing while mending his nets, and I would sit in the door of his fishhouse with the melodeon at my side. It had a wooden case with a leather handle, but it was too heavy to carry, so I pushed it in the Faulkners' wheelbarrow. In the afternoon the children sang their fathers' songs, and it was strange to hear from them of Villikens and his Dinah, and how he "kissed her cold corpus a thousand times o'er." Later, at his home, Mr. Ben would sing for another hour songs learned when fishing off Newfoundland's banks, or from sailors shipwrecked on their island. Mrs. Henneberry would give what encouragement she could. One afternoon he sang the whole seventyeight verses of "The Courtship of Willie Riley" at one sitting. I shifted from one hand to the other, trying to keep up with the words. After the
briefest rest, I would hear the latch lift as the first evening visitor arrived. Mr. Ben would come at seven, and as long as he was there nobody would sing because he had taught them most of the songs they knew, so they felt the songs were his. The singers were never interrupted except to help if a word or line was forgotten. If the tempo was too quick to write down all the words at the first singing, I would get the opening line of each new verse and fill in later because in repeating, a whole verse might be left out. Then carne the tune and everybody helped. They felt that what I was doing was important, but if their songs were
being preserved, they wanted them to be right...During my stay on the island, Mr. Ben would leave soon after nine... The younger men would sing then and it was usually three a.m. before the last one left.
Ben Henneberry's repertoire reflected the mixed ancestry of the islanders. Some of his songs, such as "Whiskey in the Jar", "Mantle So Green" and "Willie Riley's Courtship", were obviously of Irish origin, but many were English or Scottish ballads. There were Child ballads, such as "The Cruel Mother", "Catherine Jaffray" and "The Farmer's Curst Wife", and, perhaps surprisingly, a couple of Robin Hood ballads ("The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood" and "Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham").
Henneberry also knew a variety of broadside ballads: "Silvy", "Well Sold the Cow" and "Napoleon's Farewell to Paris" can serve as three quite diverse examples. And there were local songs narrating the fate of ships known to sailors along the province's
Atlantic coastline, such as "The Mary L. MacKay". Most of these ballads Creighton collected on Devil' s Island, with the help of her melodeon, although Henneberry, who was justifiably proud of his repertoire, was willing occasionally to sing into the Dictaphone (which required electricity) at the Creighton residence in Dartmouth.
The Creighton-Senior Collaboration, 1932-51
The arrival of Doreen Senior in Halifax in the summer of 1932 was a fortuitous event for Canadian folksong collecting. Doreen, a friend and disciple of Maud Karpeles, was a folk and country dance instructor, trained by the English Folk Dance Society, who anticipated a career as a music teacher making good use of Cecil Sharp's published collections of Folk Songs for Schools. She was aware that Maud had recently undertaken two successful collecting trips to Newfoundland (in 1929 and 1930), and was curious to see if Nova Scotia might similarly afford interesting variants of old English folksongs and ballads, or even songs that had crossed the Atlantic and subsequently disappeared in their more urban and industrialized land of origin.
Helen Creighton had taken over from Roy Mackenzie as the leading folksong collector in Nova Scotia, and was awaiting the publication of her first collection, Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, which would finally appear in print early the next year. Not a highly trained musician, although she did play piano and melodeon and could sing well enough, Helen had struggled to capture the traditional tunes she had encountered when collecting the material for that first book, and she was looking for a new collaborator who could note the melodies while she wrote down the words. In her autobiography, A Life in Folklore, she recalled her first meeting with Doreen in the following terms:
For years the Nova Scotia Summer School had been bringing interesting people here, and one day I was invited to meet a new teacher, Miss Doreen Senior of the English Folk Song and Dance Society. She liked people and they liked her to such an extent that whenever I met one of her old summer school students in later years, they would always ask about her. She was a musician with the gift of perfect pitch and she had an interest in folk music. Her schedule was heavy, but she had abundant energy. We talked about English folk songs, what I had found here and my problems with music. I asked if she would like to go collecting with me, but made it clear that as far as money was concerned it was a gamble, since I had none to offer. She was too interested to let this deter her, and, after a few more meetings, when our friendship had ripened, we decided to spend the two weeks at the end of her term, before she returned to England, on a collecting trip. Books on collecting usually said that folk songs were found in remote areas where people had no outside interests and were forced to entertain themselves. With this in mind we chose Cape Breton, and named the family car in honour of the great English collector Cecil Sharp, whose work we tried to emulate.[1]
Cape Breton (1932)
The two women set out together for the first time on August 15th, 1932, "full of high spirits and a sense of adventure."
"Well Sold the Cow" Collected Creighton, 1932, p.29. Sung by Ben Henneberry, Devil's Island, N.S.
1. Come all ye good people, a srory I'll tell,
It's of a rich farmer in Yorkshire did dwell."
He had a youthful boy which he hired as a man
All for to do his work, and his name it was John.
Chorus:
Fall de diddle dido fall de doll de dey,
Eall de diddle dido, fall de doll de dey.
2. Early one morning John's master arose,
Into Jack's room he instantly goes,
"Jack my dear fellow, drive the cow to the fair,
For she is in good order and her we can spare.
Chorus.
3. Jack took the cow, drove her our of the farm;
He had not gone far when he met with three men,
He had nor gone far when he met with three men,
And he sold the cow for 5 pound ten.
Chorus.
4. They went to an ale-house all for to get a drink,
It's three men paid him right down in a jink,
"What will I do with my money, landlady?'" said he,
"ln the lining of your coat I'll sew it," said she,
"For it's here upon the road it's robbed you might be."
Chorus.
5. A robber in thc room he sat drinking up his wine,
But thinking to himself, "That money shall be mine,"
Jack took his leave and started for home;
The robber he followed him out of the room.
Chorus.
6. The robber overrook him ail on the highway,
"How far do you travel, young man?" he did say.
"Three or four miles as near I know,"
And he jumped on behind and away they did go.
Chorus.
7. They rode away together till they came to a narrow lane.
"Deliver up your money, young man," he did say;
"Deliver up your money without fear or strife,
Or this very moment I'll take away your life."
Chsrus.
8. Jack iumped from the saddle without fear or doubt,
From the lining of his coat he pulled the money out,
From the lining of his coat he pulled the money out,
And along the green grass he shattered it about.
Chorus.
9. The robber a-lighted down from his horse,
But little did he think it was to his loss;
While a-gathering up the money which Jack threw on the grass,
Jack jumped on the saddle and rode off with the horse.
Charus.
10. One of the servants seen ]ack coming home,
It's in to the master they instantly run
He said, "Jack, my dear fellow, have you made a swap?
Or did my cow turn into a horsel"
Chorus.
11. "No, my dear master, the truth I'll unfold
I was stopped on the way by a highwayman so bold,
While gathering up the money which I threw upon the grass
To prove mvself a man I brought home the horse."
Chorus.
12. When the saddle-bags were opened, and in them were fold
Five hundred bright guineas in silver and gold,
A bright pair of pistols, the farmer did vow,
"Jack, my dear fellow, you have well sold the cow."