The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9182   Message #4221324
Posted By: Tony Rees
21-Apr-25 - 03:11 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Jesus Met Woman at the Well/Maid & Palmer
Subject: RE: Origins: Jesus Met Woman at the Well/Maid & Palmer
As noted by myself (as Wikipedia editor at the time) in the Wikipedia article, John Jacob Niles claimed to have noted a fragmentary version of Child 21, The Maid and the Palmer, in Kentucky in 1932, although some commentators are suspicious of some/many of Niles' claims to have unearthed ballads, or fragments of the same, that no-one else had found (in the U.S.). Be that as it may, here is Niles' comments and transcribed fragment:

From "The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles"
Copyright© 1960, 1961 by John Jacob Niles

The Maid and the Palmer (Child No. 21)
Seven Years (Niles No. 15)

These verses were recited, not sung, to me by a young member of the Holcolm family in Kingdom Come Valley — a girl about nine years old. Everyone else had either sung or told some tall tale, and the little girl felt she should make a contribution to the day. The result was a 3-stanza version of "The Maid and the Palmer." The child's grandmother said that the three verses had come from an uncle, whose name, unfortunately, I did not get.

[later on same page] The date was July 7, 1932.

Seven Years

1. "Seven years you shall atone,
Derry leggo, derry don,
Your body be a steppingstone,
Derry leggo downie.

2. "For your sins be as the sea,
Derry leggo, derry don,
You did slew your babies three,
Derry leggo downie."

3. "Though my sins be as the sea,
Derry leggo, derry don,
I make a stone for thee,
Derry leggo downie."