The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #86220   Message #1601925
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
10-Nov-05 - 09:54 PM
Thread Name: Origins/Authenticity:Lonely Willow Tree (Child #4)
Subject: RE: Origins/Authenticity:Lonely Willow Tree (Child #4)
The Contemplator often has good midis, but none accompanies this text. The one in Mudcat is sort of generic.
'Sally Brown' would have been the seventh victim of this serial killer. This is reminiscent of the version "The King's Seven Daughters," collected in Mississippi and included in B. H. Bronson, Yhe Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads, no. 124, p. 21-22, with music.
"The Outlandish Knight," no. 130, with music, in Bronson, p. 23, the story is similar; this one is from "Vermot Folk Songs and Ballads," edited by Flanders and Brown.
In these Bronson versions, the rogue already had talked the maid into giving him her father's gold, her mother's keys,, and her fathers best horses. These preliminaries are absent from the version in the DT and in the Contemplator.

Not only do the versions in the DT and the Contemplator sound modern, but they seem to have been simplified for easy singing and recording.