Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home / When I Saw...

Subject: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Dulci46
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 04:31 PM

I have the lyrics and chords to this song, need the tune. It is listed in the database but I get an error message when I try to look at it. Thanks

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: GUEST,Bill in Alabama
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 05:03 PM

If sheet music music helpe you, please click Here

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Ferrara
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 06:11 PM

Bill in Alabama, thanks a million! I'm starting to do concerts of parlor songs, played on the zither etc, and am very excited to see this sheet music.

*But,* this isn't exactly the trad version of the song. The original parlor songs tended to be flowery and heavily ornamented, and the folk process simplified them, both words and melody.

Now. How can I get you the folk melody? I know it, but my computer skills are rusting to dust these days. If no one comes up with it, message me and I'll go ahead and type it in, make a MIDI, etc. I'll have to get some help, tho. - Rita Ferrara

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Jeep man
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 09:12 PM

It is on mp3.com, click on bluegrass and scroll till you find it, you can download the whole song. Jeepman

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 09:48 PM

BLUEgrass!!..say it ain't so, Joe....(waiting till the bluegrassers get around to co-opting "Flowers of the Forest", and "Skaters Waltz")

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Dale Rose
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 10:10 PM

Ferrara, if you'd like to have it, I'll Email you Mac and Bob's c.1926 version. Still gives me one of those little thrills every time I hear it.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Dulci46
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 10:44 PM

Thanks for the help. Just what I was wanting !!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Ferrara
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 11:03 PM

Dale, yes, I'd love it. email is [e-mail].

One of the reasons Bill D and I can live together in harmony, is that he doesn't know the secret depths of depravity lurking in my record collection. I learned the set of words I use for "Quilting Party" (another name for Seeing Nellie Home) from a Country Gentlemen record. Used to go to their regular performances, at the Shamrock in DC.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Dale Rose
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 11:12 PM

I have that one, too, and virtually all of the CG albums, for that matter. Love that phrase, light as ocean foam, one of the most inspired bits of writing ever, I think.

I will get right at it, expect it later tonight. I cannot record directly to RA from lp or cassette, though, so it will be slightly muddy with a mike. But then, with a 1926 original, it would be hard to tell anyway, right?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Mar 00 - 12:12 PM

....ya' spend half your life hiding from raging eclectics, and then ya' find you've clasped one to yer bosom.....

"Et Tu, Ferrara"

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Dale Rose
Date: 26 Mar 00 - 12:11 PM

Just thought I would add this for those who like different versions ~~ Mac and Bob sing But those hopes are dead and gone where the data base says And those hopes have lived and grown Guess they were a bit more pessimistic about the outcome of the evening with Nellie!

One more thing, something I have never done before ~~ advertised that I will send an RA sound file and cover picture (about 700KB)to anyone who asks for it via personal message or here if they wish. So far I have sent it out to five people, and it would certainly be no problem to send it to others, as it is already compiled.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: DonMeixner
Date: 26 Mar 00 - 05:09 PM

I learned this from Bradley Kinkaid as Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party.

Don

Subject: DTADD Version: WHEN I SAW SWEET NELLIE HOME
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 04:32 PM

The original (?) lyrics are found in the copy linked by Bill in Alabama. "Aunt Dinah's quilting party" appears in one printing (1856), seemingly unauthorized. An "August evening party" appears in another (1859) which the author claims is the only authorized and correct edition, as well as in the Georgia printing linked by Bill. Lyrics in the DT are of a later version.
Here is the 1859 version from sheet music published by Wm. A. Pond and Co., New York, author John Fletcher. "An unauthorized and incorrect copy of this song has been published under my name but without my consent. This is the ONLY CORRECT EDITION."

Lyr. Add: WHEN I SAW SWEET NELLIE HOME
Music John Fletcher.

In the sky the bright stars glittered
On the grass the moonlight fell.
Hushed the sound of daylight bustle
Closed the pink eyed pimpernell
As a-down the moss grown woodpath
Where the cattle love to roam
From an August evening party
I was seeing Nellie home.

Chorus:
In the sky the bright stars glittered
On the grass the moonlight shone
From an August evening party
I was seeing Nellie home.

When the autumn tinged the greenwood
Turning all its leaves to gold
In the lawn by elders shaded
I my love to Nellie told.
As we stood together gazing
On the star-bespangled dome
How I blessed the August evening
When I saw sweet Nellie home.

White hairs mingled with my tresses
Furrows steal upon mybrow
But a love smile cheers and blesses
Life's declining moments now.
Matron in the snowy kerchief
Closer to my bosom come
Tell me dost thou still remember
When I saw sweet Nellie home.

WHEN I SAW SWEET NELLIE HOME

Unauthorized(?) 1856 version, last line verse 1:
From Aunt Dinah's quilting party
I was seeing Nellie home.

No other differences to the lyrics, but the name Frances Kyle has been added as lyricist. Apparently she is responsible for the quilting party substitution.

Nicholas Tawa, editor, 1989, "American Solo Songs through 1865,, pp. 346-349," (Vol. 1 of "Three Centuries of American Music- A Collection of American Sacred and Secular Music," G. K. Hall & Co., pub.), accepted the 1859 version as the authorized publication, and only credits John Fletcher.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 04:41 PM

Seemingly, the publication by J. S. Payne, Portland, 1856, claimed authorship H. S. Cartee (Perham's Troupe, Gems of the Minstrelsy), is the unauthorized version. Copies at the Levy Collection. Perham's Opera House Troupe performed blackface minstrelsy.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 05:02 PM

The abbreviated version in the DT, Under the title "Quilting Party," appears in "Heart Songs, Melodies of Days Gone By," published in 1909 by Chapple Pub. Co., for the World Syndicate Company, publishers of the "National Magazine." No author is cited.

This 518 page compilation was widely distributed. There was discussion of a second volume, but I don't believe that it was ever issued.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 07:58 PM

Hi, Q - there was a sequel, of sorts - a two-volume work called Heart Throbs. It has sentimental poems and recitations. I think it does have some song lyrics, but no notation.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: masato sakurai
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 09:17 PM

The unauthorized edition of 1856 is at Levy and American Memory:

Title: When I Saw Sweet Nellie Home. Song & Chorus.
Composer, Lyricist, Arranger: Words by Frances Kyle. Music by J. Fletcher.
J. Fletcher Publication: Portland: J.S. Paine, 1856.

When I saw sweet Nellie home / by J. Fletcher.
Portland, ME: J. S. Paine, 1856.

Other editions at American Memory:

When I saw sweet Nellie home. Gems of Southern song.
Macon; Savannah, Georgia, John W. Burke, [186-]

When I saw sweet Nellie home.
Macon; Savannah, Georgia, John C. Schreiner & Son, [186-]

When I saw sweet Nellie home / by J. Fletcher.
Boston: Ditson, Oliver, 1884.

The "ONLY CORRECT EDITION" Guest Q referred to is also reproduced in Richard Jackson's Popular Songs of Nineteenth-Century America (Dover, 1976, pp. 229-232). Jackson comments on differences between editions (pp. 284-285):

(1) The most famous line in the song is that which ends the verse and the chorus: "From Aunt Dinah's quilting party I was seeing Nelly home." It appears in the first edition (Paine). The first "official" edition (Pond), however, changes "Aunt Dinah's quilting party" to "an august evening party." Now, the substitution is not only inexplicable, the appearance of the word "august" is preposterous. Surely the word "August" was intended but was waylaid by one of the industry's typically careless typesetters. (If Fletcher was bent on improving the text, he missed the opportunity to dispense with the ghastly image o the "pink-eyed pimpernell" as well as the indelicate "path Where the cattle love to roam"; no farm boy in his right mind would walk his girl home at night on a route so adversely aromatic and hazardous to shoes.) In the "second" authorized edition issued after the renewal of the copyright (in 1882 by Fletcher and 1884 by Ditson), "Aunt Dinah" is mysteriously reinstated, the "august evening party" banished.
(2) In all editions examined (including one as late as 1908 by Century Music) the covers identify the song's heroine as Nellie; yet in the caption titles (just above the music) and throughout the text she is consistently referred to as Nelly.
(3) The 1856 pirated edition credits [Miss] Frances Kyle as author of the text. Fletcher's edition omits any author credit. The cover page of the 1884 edition credits [Mr.] Francis Kyle, while page one of the very same edition credits [Miss] Frances Kyle.

The version adopted in Lester S. Levy's Grace Notes in American History: Popular Sheet Music from 1820 ton 1900 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1967, pp. 99-101) is from the 1858(?) edition (Levy said this "was composed in 1858").~Masato

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: Stewie
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 09:50 PM

The Floyd County Ramblers' 1931 recording on Victor of 'Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party' has been reissued on CD: Various Artists 'Rural String Bands of Virginia' County CD-3502. This is a gem of an album.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 10:42 PM

Francis-Frances confuses many people. Canadians seem especially prone to spelling the name with an "i," Francis, regardless of sex.
The banishment, then reinstatement of Frances Kyle is interesting. I could find no information on her.

In the second verse, the 1859 version has "how I blest the august evening;" August is capitalized in the 1984 printing by Ditson. I assumed the month was meant in both. To me, that version is preferable because a girl coming home from a quilting party with her beau would be followed by a gaggle of giggling females.

The idea of a path used by cattle being moss-grown shows that the author was a city boy- any path regularly used by cattle is mostly or entirely bare. On the other hand, the image of "the pink-eyed pimpernel," a primrose, is not ghastly but pleasant (a lovely little plant from England, much grown in temperate states as well).
Too much analysis can be applied to any song.

And when did the line, "as light as ocean foam," appear? It is in the 1909 "Heart Songs" volume. The title "Quilting Party" also appears there.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: masato sakurai
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 10:57 PM

The Max Hunter Collection has a recording:

The Quilting Party (As sung by Floyd McGinnis, Pea Ridge, Arkansas on May 20, 1969)

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: masato sakurai
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 11:25 PM

The Country Gentlemen's version (titled "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" on Folk Session Inside) is the same as SEEING NELLIE HOME in the DT, which contains the "rested light as ocean foam" stanza.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: masato sakurai
Date: 22 Jun 03 - 06:03 PM

MIDI & lyrics of the 1859 edition are at Public Domain Music (scroll down to "1859").

A college song version, which is in The Most Popular College Songs (Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge, 1904; rev. ed., 1906, p. 17; "The Quilting Party") and in Carmina Princetona: The Princeton Song Book (G. Schirmer, 1902; 21th ed., 1927, p. 98; "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party"), has the familiar tune & words.

The Virtual Gramophone has this recording: "Aunt Dinah's quilting party, or, Seeing Nellie home -- Haydn Quartet" (Recorded: [10 Sep 1903], Camden, NJ by Victor Talking Machine), which also has the "rested light as ocean foam" stanza.

These editions (without music) are at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

When I Saw Sweet Nelly Home

Seeing Nelly Home

Floyd County Ramblers' "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" is on Times Ain't Like They Used To Be, Vol. 6: Classic Recordings of the 1920s and 30s (Yazoo 2064) and on Black & White Hillbilly Music: Early Harmonica Recordings from the 1920s & 1930s (Trikont 226) [both with sound clip].

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 23 Jun 03 - 05:53 PM

A Civil War song, sung to "Seeing Nellie Home."

"Mother, I Am Going," in American Memory, Nineteenth Century Song Sheets. J, H. Johnson, Philadelphia, nd.

First verse and chorus:
Farewell, mother! I must leave you,
Freedom's cause I must defend;
And, if I in battle perish,
Trust in Heaven unto the end.
Freedom calls- and shall I falter,
Or refuse to lend a hand?

Cho.
Courage, mother! I am going,
Freedom's drooping flag to save;
When I am gone, refrain from weeping,
There's an arm to shield the brave.

And so on.
Civil War Song Sheets Collection.

Probably most noteworthy for the name given for the tune, "Seeing Nellie Home," since "When I Saw Sweet Nellie Home" was the title on the sheet music released less than four (seven for the unauthorized) years before (assuming 1863 for this song).

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Seeing Nellie Home / When I Saw...
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 12:44 PM

Thank you all for you invaluable contributions on one of my most favorite songs. If anyone has more verses to the War version "Mother, I am Going" I would greatly appreciate them.