Subject: Lyr Add: JOHN AND WILLIAM (from Josephine McGill)
From:
Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 May 02 - 09:55 AM
In versions of the song where the heroine deliberately raises the dead, she usually uses music, generally played on the harp or the flute; in some, however, she weeps or mourns to the same effect. In Child's version C, for example (from Motherwell's MS., noted "From the recitation of Mrs. Cunningham, Ayr"): She ran distraught, she wept, she sicht,
She wept the sma brids frae the tree,
She wept the starns adoun frae the lift,
She wept the fish out o the sea. Of the forty-one examples cited by Bronson, only one has her mourning, rather than charming, harping etc., birds out of trees and so on. I'm not familiar with Rosalie Sorrel's work, or what kind of sources she used, so I have no reason to suppose that the following is particularly close to her recording, but I give it anyway because it has a fine tune, though the text is a bit decayed.
JOHN AND WILLIAM
(Collected by Josephine McGill, 1914, from an unnamed singer in Knott or Letcher County, Kentucky)
O John and William walked out one day
To view the iron band.
Says John to William, "At any price
We'd better turn home again."
"O no", says William, "That never can be
That we'll return again,
For I'm the one loves pretty Susanne
And I will murder thee."
"What will you tell to my mother dear,
When she askès for her son John?"
"I left him at the cottage school
His lessons for to learn."
"What will you tell to my father dear,
When he askès for his son John?"
"I left him in the high wild woods
A-learnin' his hounds to run."
"What will you tell to my pretty Susanne,
When she askès for her true love John?"
"I left him in the grave-lie deep,
Never more to return."
She mourned the fish all out of the sea,
The birds all out of the nest;
She mourned her true love out of his grave
Because that she could not rest.
"What do you want, my pretty Susanne,
What do you want with me?"
"A kiss or two from your pretty bright lips
Is all I ask of thee."
"Go home, go home, my pretty Susanne,
Go home, go home, said he;
If you weep and mourn all the balance of your days
You'll never more see me."
Quoted by Bronson, Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, vol.I, 1959, from Josephine McGill's Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, 1917.
Child #49 (Bronson #49:29)
Roud no. 38
À propos the tune, Bronson commented: "This beautiful variant has relations with Young Hunting (68) and Lady Gay (79)."
I've made a midi from the notation as quoted by Bronson; until it appears at the Mudcat Midi Pages, it can be heard via the South Riding Folk Network site:
John and William (midi)
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