Hi,

I'm starting on 8D. Quaker's Wooing/Courtship and have one important addition to the standard repertoire that is from an Autograph Album once owned by John Niblo of New York which was reprinted in "Early Cayuga Days: Folk lore and local history of a New York county" by Dorothy E. Snow in 1940. No title (I'm using "Quaker's Wooing") was provided and the original spelling kept. This version from Cayuga County, New York is the earliest extant version and brings the date closer to the 1700s. The penultimate stanza is similar to Henneberry's stanza from Devil's Island, NS. The unusual "c-m" chorus is presumably used to simulate a "hmm" or "hum" sound which in this case would be "sim."

Dorothy E. Snow reports: "In the back pages of an Autograph Album once owned by John Niblo, Poplar Ridge, and dated 1835. I found these lilting lines, obviously copied in the penmanship of owner Niblo:"

Madam I have come a courting
O deary O - O deary me
Madam I have come a wooing
c-m c-m c-m c-m c-m

Get you gone you ugly Quaker
Tal lal laddy O
I'll have none your Quaker actions
Cuddy mading a daddy O.

O here is a ring cost forty bright shillings,
O deary O - O deary me
Thou shalt have it if thou art willing
c-m c-m c-m c-m c-m

O I wants none your rings nor money
Tal lal laddy O
I'll have a husband call me honey
Cuddy mading a daddy O

O must I be a presbytterian[1],
O deary O - O deary me
Or must I be of no religion
c-m c-m c-m c-m c-m

O you must learn to lie and flatter
Tal lal laddy O
Or else you never can come at her
Cuddy mading a daddy O

O going to bed I do not chose[2] it
O deary O - O deary me
Going to bed I do refuse it
c-m c-m c-m c-m c-m

If sitting up is your desire
Tal lal laddy O -
O you may sit up by the fire
Cuddy mading a daddy O

1. Presbyterian
2. choose

These are a few of the early listings:

A. "Quaker's Wooing." My title, from an Autograph Album once owned by John Niblo of Poplar Ridge and dated 1835; reprinted in "Early Cayuga Days: Folk lore and local history of a New York county" by Dorothy E. Snow - 1940. Her notes follow.
B. "Quaker's Wooing." From: "A Pioneer Songster: Texts from the Stevens-Douglass Manuscript of Western New York; 1841-1856" by Harold W. Thompson, ?Edith E. Cutting. (10 stanzas)
C. "The Quaker's Song," sung in 1931 by Mrs. Rachel Post, Belding, who learned the song at school, about 1868. From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan- by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
D. "The Quaker's Courtship." Sung in 1934 by Mrs. Charles Muchler, Kalkaska, who learned the song when she was a child, about 1872. From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan- by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
E. "Quaker's Courtship" arranged by George Kanski and published in 1878 in New York by William A. Pond Co. (10 stanzas)
F. "Quaker Courtship." From "Games and songs of American children, collected and compared" by W.W. Newell; 1883. This was taken from children in Hartford, Connecticut. (8 stanzas)
G. "The Old Quaker." From the Rowell manuscript, c. 1883. From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan- by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
H. "The Quaker Song." From "A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes," p. 35, S. Baring-Gould, Editor, published in 1895 by Methuen and Co. London. The song notes report it was "collected from a Devonshire nurse." The song is attributed to Mary Langworthy in Sabine Baring-Gould Manuscript Collection (SBG/3/12/6B). See text below.
I. "Quaker's Wooing." dated 1899. From "Some Traditional Songs" by Phillips Barry, 1905. Taken from The Allen Family Songs booklet which was "compiled by Rosa S. Allen; music arranged by Joseph A. Allen. As sung by the Aliens at the Homestead, Castle Hill, Medfield, Massachusetts, 1899."
J. "Quaker's Courtship," about 1901, from Mrs. Carl Hubbell of Woodstock who learned the song when she was a very young girl from a summer visitor to the Catskills at the turn of the century. From the Album FH5311 (Folksongs of the Catskills) dated 1963 by Folkways Records by Moncure and Siemsen. Sung by Barbara Moncure.
K. "Quaker's Wooing." Anon informant, from Fall River, Mass. published in "Some Traditional Songs" by Phillips Barry, 1905.

Richie