Hi,

TY Steve. What originally piqued my interest in Drowsy Sleepers back 12 years ago or so is its association with East Carolina Blues or as Sharp titled it "Old Virginny" which begins:

I was born in old Virginny,
North Carolina I did go. . .

This was a song I'd played many times with my bluegrass group and I noticed other people singing "Drowsy Sleeper" lyrics mixed in. Here's an example of Drowsy Sleeper with the East Carolina Blues lyrics mixed in:

Lila Shiflett, of Pirkey, Virginia, contributed a version.

(C) Drowsy Sleepers [original spelling kept]

Wake up, wake up, you drowsy sleepers,
Wake up, wake up, for it's almost day.
How can you stand for to sleep and slumber
When your own true love is going away?

Once I lived in old Virginia,
To North Carolina I did go,
And there I spyed a nice young lady,
And oh her name I did not know.

Her hair was black, her eyes were sparkling,
And on her cheeks were diamonds red,
And on her breast she wore a lily,
And ah the tears that I did shed.

When I am sleep I am dreaming about her,
When I am awake I see no rest.
Every moment seems like an hour,
And ah the pains that crosst my breast.

Oh, Mollie dear, go ask your mother
If you my bride can ever be,
And if she says no, come back and tell me,
And I no more will trouble thee.

Ah, no, I will not go ask my mother,
For she lies on her bed at rest,
And in one hand she holds a dagger
To kill the man that I love best.

From: Scarborough; "A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains" 1938, published posthumously. Her notes follow:

This is an Irish ballad, which fact explains its omission from Child's collection, or from the Virginia volume which limits itself to Child items. It is given by Cecil Sharp in his English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, listed as a ballad, and he notes its previous appearances in Britain (Gavin Grieg's Folk-Song of the North-East, I, arts. 54, 123; Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 225, etc.). Professor Kittredge has a note on it in the Journal of American Folk-Lore,XX,260, as a variant of a song which Allan Cunningham knew in a Nithsdale version and quotes in part in a note to "O, my luve's like a red, red rose," in his edition of Burns, 1834, IV, 285.
Sharp gives it under the title of "Arise, Arise," I, 72. Baskerville discusses it as one of a group of songs in "The Night Visit," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXXI, 566 et seq.

This ballad is pieced out in some instances with parts of a song current in America, called "The Silver Dagger," or "The Bloody Dagger," but they are not the same.

In the Charles Read Baskervill article mentioned by Scarborough is the Ramsay text (TTM circa 1725) which Steve quoted-- which I already had on my web-site but overlooked.

The question is: Why does Scarborough call this an Irish ballad?

Richie