The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #116137   Message #2494876
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
15-Nov-08 - 09:59 PM
Thread Name: Origins: The authors of the 'Carter Family songs'
Subject: RE: Origins: The authors of the 'Carter Family songs'
"Bring Back My/The Blue-eyed Boy" is widespread. One version in Randolph, Ozark Folk-Songs, was said to have been learned about 1900 (Missouri). Collected in Indiana, Texas.
The 'ca. 1900' version had 5 verses- Remember well, Must I be bound, Bring back my.., Met in a park, Wings of an angel.

Bonnie Blue Eyes/More Pretty Girls also is widespread. In one version reported by Louise Bascom from NC in 1909, the singer laments -

I'm forty-one miles from home
I'm forty-one miles from home
I'm forty-one miles from home
Good-bye, little Bonnie Blue Eyes.

And now she's married and gone,
An' now she's married and gone
I've waited around for her too long
An' now she's married and gone.

The versions (2) collected by Bascom, both with the title "Bonnie Blue Eyes," tell a better story.
Like several other songs collected in NC (Kitty Kline, etc.), the colloquialisms 'Mommer' and 'Popper' are used.