Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till

Subject: Lyr Add: COME, MY LOVE, COME
From: Metchosin
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 03:31 AM

Come My Love Come (Nancy Till)

Down in d' canebrake
Close by the mill
There lives a colored girl
Her name is Nancy Gill.
I told her I loved her
I loved her very long
I'm gonna serenade her
And this'll be my song:

Chorus:
Come my love come
My boat lies low
She lies high and dry
On the O-hi-o,
Come my love come
Won't you come along with me?
And I'll take you down to Tennessee

Down in d' canebrake
Some happy day
You'll hear the wedding bells
A ringin' might gay
There's gonna be a cabin
And in a trundle bed
There'll be a pickaninny
And all because I said:
Chorus:

Down in d' canebrake
That's where I'll stay
'Long side my Nancy Gill
Till we are laid away
And when I get to heaven
And Peter lets us in
I'll start my wings a flappin'
And sing to her again:
Chorus:
^^

Collected from the songs of Charles Edward Prewett, British Columbia Light Horse, minstrel shows, Vernon B.C,. Canada (ca. 1915). A version with similar first verse and chorus is in the Levy Sheet Music Collection under the title Nancy Till.

Anne and Frank Warner, collected a fragment of this song from Eleazar Tillett of Wanchese, NC (Outer Banks) in 1951 and it was recorded by Jeff Warner and Jeff Davis as Come Love Come on the album Wilder Joy (Flying Fish 1986), a compilation of two songs Nancy Till and Dan Emmett's (Mt. Vernon, OH) "Boatsman Dance" of the 1840s

. Frank Brown of Duke Univ. also collected a version of this song in 1926 from Charles Tillett, Eleazar Tillett's husband. [Brown, Frank C. Folk Songs from North Carolina. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952. (Vol. III of the Seven vol. Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, p. 491

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:26 AM

This is lovely. The language isn't PC but the loving tone and clear images of it would be lost if "translated." Even in the midst of what's been done to people there's this loveliness of people being just people. Thanks for sharing it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Sep 00 - 01:05 PM

More info: If you go to the American Memory website and click on "Search,"
--Type in "nancy till"
--In the first block with the little down arrow, select "match this exact phrase"
--Click "Search,"
you'll get 7 hits for sheet music.

If I recall correctly, I don't think I've heard Jeff sing anything that's race-specific. I haven't heard him do it for a while, but I think he sings something else besides "colored" and "pickaninny." While it's a good idea to have songs that recall a different time and way of thinking, people aren't likely to sing them if they don't mean much in regards to life the way it is these days. (Maybe scholars will, but "just folks" will be sitting around whispering "Pickaninny? Did he just sing 'pickaninny'?!?!")

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Sep 00 - 01:39 PM

Thanks again Jeri, an incredible resource. I also managed to find this on an old 78RPM by Frank Crumit. My brother and I sang this song as small children and as small children we had absolutely no idea what any of the language of the song referred to. We just liked the tune and listening to my Grampa "rip it up" on the banjo. Unfortunately most of what he played, except for songs from his old RN days, proved to be very racist, but they were of his time.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come
From: GUEST,Sarah
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 11:12 AM

Does anyone have an mp3 version of this song? My mother turns 80 this year and we are trying to put together a CD of music she used to sing to us. This was a big favourite. I love the song, PC or not...of course we know it is from a different time and yet to try to change it, would just take away from the nostalgia. We all know whats right, and whats wrong...music is sacred!

If anyone can forward, I would appreciate. [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 03:00 AM

I just stumbled across this site, but based on what I'm reading here, I thought y'all might like to know that a variation of this song can be heard in the film "Hell In The Pacific", a curious movie about an American pilot and Japanese warship captain who are stranded together on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific during World War II>

Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune were the only cast members. In a couple of scenes Lee Marvin's character sings/speaks this song about "Nancy Gill" or "Nancy Dill", depending on how you hear it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: RangerSteve
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 07:44 PM

The version I heard, as recorded by the Coon Hunters - a group that included Merle Travis in his first recordings started with the first verse mentioned above, then followed with :

Come to the window,
My love, do,
Listen to the music I'm playin for you,
Whisper a love song, soft and low,
Harmonize the music on my old banjo.

Softly the casement begins to rise,
Stars am a-twinklin, up in the skies.
The moon is declinin' way behind the hill,
Reflectin it's light upon you, my Nancy Till.

Farewell, my true love, I must away,
Got a long way to travel before the break of day,
The next time I see you, be ready for to go,
Sail away together on the Ohio.

The Coon Hunters recordings are available on a cd from the British Archives of Country Music (B.A.C.M.). Camsco Music can get it here in the states.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST,Paul Goode
Date: 12 Jul 10 - 08:18 AM

My Mother sang this song to me around 1945. As I recall it went:

"Come along come my boat lies low
She lies high dry on the Ohio
come along come wont you come along with me
and I'll take you down to Tennessee

Down by the cane break close by the mill
I saw a lovely lady there her name was Daffodil
I told that I loved her I told her there and then
I'm gonna serenade her and this will be my song

(no racial inferences here) but I believe it must have been a lullabye originally as my mother always sang us to sleep with this wonderful melody

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: RoyH (Burl)
Date: 12 Jul 10 - 12:51 PM

This takes me back to my childhood and treasured records by the great Frank Crumit. I loved the song, but being just a lad I couldn't understand how the boat could 'lie low' and be 'high and dry' at the same time. Burl.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST, brian2889
Date: 25 Jul 10 - 01:24 PM

wasn't this on the flip side of Frank Crummit's big hit, "the song of the prune"?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 02:08 PM

Ken Carson recorded this one too. {CLICKY}

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 04:08 PM

How can a boat lie low and be high and dry?

To 'lie low' is to hide. The boat must be hidden, probably in trees or brush, in a high, dry spot.

I admit that we usually hear of people, not boats, lying low. As in "The bank robbers fled into the hills to lie low until the hue and cry died out."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: Iona
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 01:54 AM

I was just wondering about that, Leenia, thanks. :D

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 01:08 PM

Boats - loaded or taking in water - can lie low in the water. If they run aground and the tide goes out - or flood water recedes - they are left high and dry.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 01:57 PM

The samee reason one can either be filthy rich or dirt poor.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Come My Love Come / Nancy Till
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 03:16 AM

Take a look of the song by Rhiannnon Giddens, Come Love Come. Same basic lyric structure, but radically different songs. I love both. Where do the two songs intersect?
-Joe-