Mary Don't Weep

Subject: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 25 May 23 - 03:13 PM

Anybody have a date for this song? All I can find is that it is pre Civil War era.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 25 May 23 - 03:31 PM

Actually, I'm trying to find dates for a bunch of songs,
The Chickens they are Crowin'
The Wind that Shakes the Corn
Inchin' Along

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Robert B. Waltz
Date: 25 May 23 - 03:52 PM

Most of these titles are a little vague. By "Mary Don't Weep" do you mean "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep"? If so, the canonical form goes back to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, so it is not pre-Civil War, although many of the verses can be dated before the war. (This is the problem with a great many songs sung by slaves; they are so composite that there isn't really an earliest version.)

If "The Chickens They Are Crowing" is the one where the girl is in trouble because of spending a night with a man, it appears that Cecil Sharp first collected it in 1917 (which means it was probably bowdlerized). It might well be much older, but no one would print it.

"The Wind That Shakes the Corn" is a rewrite (probably modern and deliberate) of "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," which is by Robert Dwyer Joyce and was printed in 1861.

I'm not sure which song you mean by "Inchin' Along." If it's "Keep A-Inchin' Along," that's another Fisk Jubilee Singers song; they were singing it by 1901.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 May 23 - 04:07 PM

Bob Waltz is to humble to say it, but the Traditional Ballad Index (which Bob edits) is very good at establishing dates for songs. One caveat - the date of a song in the Ballad Index is the earliest date found in the sources indexed by the Ballad Index - it is not the date of composition.

See: http://balladindex.org/

Also see the other thread on "Mary Don't Weep," https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7873

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 25 May 23 - 04:20 PM

OK. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Robert B. Waltz
Date: 25 May 23 - 06:00 PM

This is pretty off-topic, but just a clarification.... Joe Offer wrote, One caveat - the date of a song in the Ballad Index is the earliest date found in the sources indexed by the Ballad Index - it is not the date of composition.

Actually, we do use the earliest date that I can verify -- it's just that the earliest date I can verify has a tendency to be the books we index. :-) But if I find earlier sheet music, I'll cite that date, or if I find an unequivocal reference, I'll cite that. And if a reputable source says, "This was published by so-and-so in such-and-such year," I'll cite that, too, with a mention of where I found the citation.

I won't just cite some random Internet citation or unverifiable allusion, though; I'd rather be wrong on the too-late-a-date side than on the too-early.

And the standard was different at the start of the Ballad Index; at that time, it was indeed the earliest book we cited (and I didn't list the source for the date, because no one suggested that in the initial planning). And since there are a lot of old entries in the Index, some of the earliest dates are pretty obsolete. :-)

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 01 Jun 23 - 01:59 PM

Thanx. Now I am trying to date the song Cape Cod Girls. If anyone has a copy of Lomax FSoNA, it should be dated there. I don't have access now.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 01 Jun 23 - 02:01 PM

Also: I need the date for the poem "Two Dead Boys."
One bright day in the middle of the night
two dead boys got up to fight...

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 01 Jun 23 - 02:04 PM

Two Dead Boys was begun in 1480
https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/two-dead-boys-got-up-to-fight/#:~:text=1%3A%20c.,middle%20of%20the%2019th%20century.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 01 Jun 23 - 03:05 PM

Butternut wrote several items.

"Cape Cod Girls" with that approximate form appears to go back only to Joanna Colcord (1924), but it is intimately linked to "South Australia," which is a few years older.

"Two Dead Boys" in that form doesn't seem to have seen print before the late 1940s (Opie & Opie, I Saw Esau, 1947; Withers, Rocket In My Pocket, 1948).

Your citation of Blind Pig and the Acorn is reading more into their statements than is actually there, I think. Yes, "The Land of Cockayne" is a tale of things impossible, but it is clearly not related to "Two Dead Boys." If you want to see the text, the authoritative source is Thorlac Turville-Petre, Poems from BL MS Harley 913: 'The Kildare Manuscript', Early English Text Society/Oxford University Press, 2015. It has both text and commentary, though I doubt the text will be much help; it begins

Fur in see bi west Spayngne
Is a land ihote Cokaygne,
(Th)er nis lond vnder heuenriche <-- That's a thorn, not a Th!
Of wel, of godnis, hit iliche.

Which I would paraphrase

Far at sea, to the west of Spain
Is a land called Cockaigne
This is no land under heaven
Of good, of godliness, like it.

The 1480 citation, of Bodleian Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734) is a much more interesting source; it's a "Small manuscript, 4.375x6". 65 folios (although, because two folio are numbered 27, the last folio number is 64); the first 10 folios were added in binding. Two scribes were involved, with the first writing most of folios 11-50 and the second writing the rest and making occasional changes to what was written by scribe A. Three pieces have music. Based on the count in the Brown/Robbins Index of Middle English Verse and its supplement, it contains some 75 Middle English poems plus a few Latin pieces." It was printed by Thomas Wright, Songs and Carols, Percy Society Publications (a book I haven't seen; copies are obscenely expensive). Unlike the Kildare Manuscript, it has several pieces that were pretty clearly traditional, or at least popular: "Bring Us Good Ale," a "Holly and the Ivy" version, "O Mary Mother," "This Endris Night." I considered a dozen and a half pieces in it to be folky enough to put in the Ballad Index. But I haven't seen anything in it that I'd consider ancestral to "Two Dead Boys." Again, it's just the style of a few items -- the "things impossible" type.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: GUEST,Butternut
Date: 02 Jun 23 - 10:48 AM

OK. That helps me alot. I'm just dating a collection of songs that I recorded - acapella. I might upload the folder here if that can be done.

Subject: RE: Mary Don't Weep
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 02 Jun 23 - 05:19 PM

A few further thoughts on "things impossible," since it's a popular motif. It's the core motif of "The Elfin Knight" [Child 2], aka "The Cambric Shirt" or "Scarborough Fair." In America, there are a lot of texts along the lines of "The Barefoot Boy with Boots On"/"While the Organ Pealed Potatoes."

Lewis Carroll of course used it to great effect in "The Walrus and the Carpenter":

The sun was shining on the sea,
      Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
      The billows smooth and bright --
And this was odd, because it was
      The middle of the night.

The Thompson Motif Index has about six pages of entries for "Impossible Tasks," starting at H1010 (compare Tale Type 428); H1020, in particular, is "Tasks contrary to laws of nature." I am not going to scan every entry on those six pages :-), but H1010 alone has citations including the Child collection, the Arabian Nights, the Brothers Grimm, an Irish myth, and things from India, Indonesia, and China. And that doesn't even mention "Culhwch and Olwen"!

And I know that was more than you wanted. :-)