Bluegrass Messengers

  Willie and Mary- Mrs. Mercer (MI) 1935 Gardner C

[Single stanza with music from: Ballads and Songs of Michigan by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939. Their notes follow.

R. Matteson 2016]

22 WHO IS TAPPING AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW?
This is a widely distributed song which belongs to a large group of English and Scottish songs concerning the "Night Visit" (Charles Read Baskervill, "English Songs on the Night Visit," PMLA, XXXVI, 565-614). All the Michigan versions contain lines that tell of Willie's killing himself with the dagger and of Mary's following his example, a borrowing from "The Silver Dagger," which, Kittredge notes, occurs also in the Wehman broadside of this song JAFL, XXX, 338). Only A of the Michigan texts begins with the lover trying to arouse his sweetheart from sleep. A and E have a final stanza describing the feelings of the parents the morning after the tragedy For other texts and references see Cox, pp. 348-349, and Mackenzie, pp. 99-100. See also Eddy, No. 26; Greenleaf and Mansfield, pp. 55-56; Scarborough, pp. 139-142, Sharp, I, 358-364; and, for a somewhat similar song, Ord, p. 318.

C. Willie and Mary- Sung in 1935 by Mrs. Edna Nummer Mercer, Belding, who learned the song from her grandmother. A text of five stanzas very similar to parts of A.

"Who is at my bedroom window,
Calling me at this late hour?"
" 'Tis I, 'tis I, 'tis I, dear Mary,
Coem to trouble thee once more."