Under the Willow Tree- Ada Belle Cowden (MO) 1909 Belden A
[Belden's title is weak. From the manuscript ballad book of Ada Belle Cowden (later married a Matteson she was born in 1893), compiled about 1909 and secured for me by Miss Laws of Christian College. From: Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-lore Society, edited by H. M. Belden. Columbia: The University of Missouri in 1940. A new edition of this work was published in 1955, with a reprinting in 1973.
Miss Cowden lived at Woodlandville, Boone County Missouri. “Woodlandville is a very old settlement in prime farmland, with solid families mostly emigrated from Kentucky and Virginia,” says Howard Marshall, BA ’70, professor emeritus of architectural history and an expert in the folklore of the mid-Missouri region known as Little Dixie [quoted from an online article].
R. Matteson 2017]
UNDER THE WILLOW TREE (Belden A) -MS Ballad book of Ada Belle Cowden, Boone Co., Belden version A, p. 483, H. M. Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society.
My heart is broken, I am in sorrow
For the only one I love.
I ne'er shall see his face again
Unless we meet in heaven above.
Chorus: Then bury me beneath the willow,
Beneath the weeping willow tree,
And when he knows that I am sleeping
Then perhaps he'll come and weep for me.
They told me that he did not love me;
But how could I believe them true
Until an angel came and whispered,
'He will prove untrue.'
Tomorrow was to be my wedding day;
But gone! oh, gone! oh, where is he?
He's gone to wed another bride
And all alone he has left me.