Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not

Subject: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 09:01 AM

Here's a mystery for you. Can anyone help?

Soaking in Terence Stamp's fine 1967 film "Far From the Madding Crowd," and enjoying the director's happy choice to use traditional songs in traditional styles,I was struck by the one song I'd never heard before:

I LOST MY LOVE I CARE NOT
Sung by Paul Dawkins in "Far From the Madding Crowd"

'Er's gone away, and I care not,
'Er's gone away, and I care not,
I'll soon find another that's better than t'other,
'Er's gone away, and I care not.

I lost my love, and I care not,
I lost my love, and I care not,]
I'll soon find another that's better than t'other,
I lost my love and I care not.

Nicely sung, to a very traditional-sounding tune. Considering how good a song it is, I'm surprised to find no reference to it anywhere in DT.

Trying to find out more about the song, I found it's printed (one verse) in Thomas Hardy's novel, basis for the film ... but nowhere else. None of the folk resources (web or books) I've gathered over a long life of digging have anything on that song.

Unless it has a separate source, the tune must have been supplied for the film, doubtless by Paul Dawkins or someone. The tune is not one I'm familiar with. It does sound authentic, but is it?

The Fiddler's Companion has a fiddle tune called I Lost My Love I Care Not. It is a wholly different tune. It cross-references to "Bundle and Go," which I vaguely remember hearing sung at a folk festival in the 70s. Can't recall if the tune is similar. However, the phrase normally refers to a Scots pipe tune (wholly different), and also occurs in Jeannie Robertson's "Bonnie Wee Lassie Who Never Said No," no real similarity there either.

Did Hardy write "I Lost My Love I Care Not?" Or is it something he heard in the West Country? He had a nice touch for that region's dialect and tradition, and was notably sensitive to music.

All the other songs he includes as part of the scene in the book are rock-botto traditional. Is this? I can find no independent source for it.

Can anyone enlighten me further?

Thanks, Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 09:43 PM

There's a page about a tune called I LOST MY LOVE AND I CARE NOT at IrishTune.info.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 09:47 PM

TheSession.org groups this tune and its variants under the heading MY LOVE IN THE MORNING.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 10:25 PM

I found this in a novel set in California in the 1920s, published in 1974 (but written much earlier):

Soon he moved on to another cow, humming to himself as he went:

Oh I lost my love and I care not,
He would come back but he dare not.

All day as she went about her work she kept thinking about it. What strange creatures people were…

—From The Devil's Hand by Edith Summers Kelley (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), page 209.

I have been unable to find when the book was written, but Kelley died in 1956 and her only other novel "Weeds" was published in 1923.

Here's the Library of Congress' description of The Devil's Hand, and two links at the bottom of that page lead to more information.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 10:52 PM

Searching for the phrase "but I care not He would come back but he dare not" I find that Google says it appears in the book Songs the Whalemen Sang by Gale Huntington (Barre, Mass.: Barre Publishers, 1964)—but that book isn't viewable online.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Effsee
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 10:58 PM

I seem to remember Ewan MacColl singing this, or something very similar, on the Album "The Singing Streets"....'60s/70s LP with Dominic Behan on Topic maybe?
It's been a long time...

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 07:12 AM

I lost my love and I dinna care how
I lost my love and I care not
The losing of one is the gaining of twa
I'll get another, I fear not

Some ladies fell to their bended knees
Some ladies fell to fainting
I fell to my bread and cheese
I always wanted the main thing

I don't see this in the DT, which surprises me, since I sing it. Maybe I thought it was too short to bother.... I think i got it from Jean Redpath.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 09:15 AM

How refreshing it is to hear that a lover lost a love and was able to handle it. So many die of love, at least in folksongs. This is a nice change.

I love your version, Susan.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 02:25 PM

Could not find it in Huntington, "Songs the Whalemen Sang." (Perhaps buried under another title, although I tried several).

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 02:42 PM

Found this fragment in Songs the Whalemen Sang."

Moll Brooks
(Title from the tune "Moll Brooks").

I've lost my beau but I care not
He would come back but he dare not
I could have another but I will not
I will be happy and free.

Euphrasia 1849

Brief musical score for "Moll Brooks" given; pp. 274-275.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Susan of DT
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 07:24 AM

Leeneia

Another song with similar outlook:
Farewell He

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 01:52 PM

Thanks for the link, Leeneia. Another 'farewell' that is not weepy, and well-written to boot. I wonder if there is an author to be found.

Like Jim Dixon, I am also perplexed by not being able to find full lyrics for an 'I Care Not' song. Just bits and pieces.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 03:54 PM

My thanks mis-directed. Should have been to Susan of DT.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 03:57 PM

Jim,
Okay, I'm hooked. The phrase 'I've lost my love and I care not' I'm sure I've come across in my searches through Roxburghe Ballads but in what I can't remember.
However here is a variant to add to the pile from Greig-Duncan Vol 6 p192 as sung by Margaret Gillespie. It goes to the tune 'O'er the Water to Charlie' the A version as given in Greig-Duncan.

I've lost my love an I keena weel fu
I've lost my love and I carna
For laith would I be jist to lie down an dee
An to sit down an greet would be bairnly.

O plague on the men their so sly an demure
As pawky as diels wi their smilin
As fickle as winter in sunshine an' shower
The hearts o' fair maidens beguiling.

I've lost...as 1
I've lost...as 1
The lossing o' ane's the gainin o twa
Fain wid he come back but he daurna.

Following up the Jean Redpath connection might prove fruitful.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 08:14 AM

I too am puzzled by the lack of corroborative evidence for Thomas Hardy's "I Lost My Love I Care Not."

The Redpath is pretty clearly a different, unrelated song in stanza framework and general feel. There are only the slightest resemblances.

I'm guessing what happened is that the makers of each song were separately inspired by the title of the fiddle tune. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened!

I heartily recommend you listen to the Paul Dawkins rendition on the "Far From the Madding Crowd" soundtrack CD, which can be found in a few places on the net. It's a corker! I find myself singing it around the house a lot. It's got a fine old sound. If Hardy didn't make it up himself, it's a great lost traditional song.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I Lost My Love I Care Not
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 08:20 AM

John O' Gaunt Morris Men use the tune for the dance "Nightingale".We pinched it from Frank Lees(?) up in Cumbria and I believe further up the chain the origin was the Newcastle area. It might be that Hexham use it as well.

Subject: Lyr Add: I HAE LOST MY LOVE (James Hogg)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 09:20 AM

I don't think this is the origin of the song we are seeking, although it has one line in common. I think it illustrates that we need to search for Scots spelling.

From Songs, by the Ettrick Shepherd by James Hogg (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1831), page 247:


I HAE LOST MY LOVE.
A bitter song against the women.

I hae lost my love, an' I dinna ken how,
I hae lost my love, an' I carena;
For laith will I be just to lie down an' dee,
And to sit down an' greet wad be bairnly;
But a screed o' ill-nature I canna weel help,
At having been guidit unfairly;
An' weel wad I like to gie women a skelp,
An' yerk their sweet haffits fu' yarely.

O! plague on the limmers, sae sly and demure,
As pawkie as deils wi' their smiling;
As fickle as winter, in sunshine and shower,
The hearts o' a' mankind beguiling;
As sour as December, as soothing as May,
To suit their ain ends, never doubt them;
Their ill faults I couldna tell ower in a day,
But their beauty's the warst thing about them!

Ay, that's what sets up the haill warld in a lowe;
Make's kingdoms to rise and expire;
Man's micht is nae mair than a flaughten o' tow,
Opposed to a bleeze o' reid fire!
'Twas woman at first made creation to bend,
And of nature's prime lord made the fellow!
An' 'tis her that will bring this ill warld to an end,
An' that will be seen an' heard tell o'!