The Cherry Tree Carol
Ballad singers who perform on stage are ALWAYS asked if they know any Christmas songs. Ballads in general make people think about the old ways and that, inevitably, brings about thoughts of FAMILY. Christmas is, of course, considered to be one of the most family orientated holidays and is celebrated as such. However, there are not that many Christmas ballads, as it were. Ballads were sort of separate from ‘church music,’ which is were you would find many more Christmas type tunes. Many ballad singers enjoyed a good hymn, especially Cas Wallin, who was the music director at his church. But being a ballad singer did not necessarily mean that you sang in church nor did singing in church mean you were also a prolific ballad singer.
Mother learned The Cherry Tree Carol from Inez Chandler. I vividly remember Inez and, as a child, I thought she looked scary with what I thought of as her ‘angry eyebrows.’ She was one of Mother’s favorites because of her fowl mouth and fierce personality. Inez features often in Mohter’s book, Come Go Home with Me, published by UNC Press. Mother remembers learning this song while she was hanging around at Inez’s house listening to a bunch bawdy ballads, one after another. Mother finally asked Inez if she knew any songs but dirty songs. Given that it was somewhere very near Christmas, Inez decided to teach her The Cherry Tree Carol. Hearing it for the first time blew mom’s mind and sang Inez sang it entirely in a minor key.
Inez Chandler
You never know what you are going to find on the internet! Thank you, sister-in-law Laurin Penland!
Little Mathie Groves
Dellie Chandler Norton, with Evelyn Ramsey sitting down in the background.
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
Little Mathie Groves is what I would call an O.G. in my ballad bank. I’ve heard it MANY times at MANY venues by MANY singers. It has everything you want in a ballad: beautiful, wealthy people doing naughty things that inevitably get heads chopped off and kicked against the wall (again). I have always been confused, however, as to why the audience always LAUGHS when the head gets kicked. Maybe it is the desensitizing influence of movies and television because I always felt that this was a more serious moment than the typical ballad fan seems to. Although I love the story, this song never did capture my imagination like Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar. Little Mathie Groves gives me another kind of gift that is maybe even more important: memories. STRONG memories. Like whenever ANY one ANY where sings Little Mathie Groves, I get to harken back to many an amazing moment in my life long relationship with ballads, ballad singers, and musicians. I am the first to admit that I sort of dropped the ball when it came to getting in there and learning all Mother had to teach me. I sort of beat myself up for not being more driven, more interested, more type-A about it. Here’s the thing, tho: I have ABSORBED ballads and other forms of Appalachian traditional music since BEFORE birth. Ballads make sense to me and the tune, tone, and timbre flows natural through my mind. I know it sounds crazy, but it really DOES feel like each song Mother sings, whether I remember hearing it or not, feels so familiar, so comfortable, so reasonable, lol. I recently saw a video of Mother and David Holt doing a performance in Berea in 1977 and the ‘take me back’ moment almost gave me whip lash.
Mother says she feels like she always sort of knew a few verses of Little Mathie Groves but never really learned the whole thing until she was grown and off singing at festivals on her own. During a conference in Cincinnati, Philip Rhodes, who was in charge of the conference, requested that Mother sing Little Mathie Groves. She went all misty eyed remembering how she called her cousin Keith to go and bring Cas to his house so that, I quote, “He could learn it to me over the phone.” If there were any words that Mother had trouble deciphering, Keith would ‘translate.’ Little Mathie Groves became a staple song for her after that and now I think all of us ‘younger’ ballad singers know it by heart.
Here, I think, is a good place to give a shout out to NC ARTS for giving mother and I the opportunity and in$piration for this project. Although I sort of (greatly) underestimated the amount of work that would go into this project, I must say I am learning SO MUCH. Not just the ballads themselves, but also about their history and their place in my own community. This project has made me see how very resilient and yet how very fragile each and every song is. Also, I have often wished during performances that I had a bit more information about each ballad I sing to share with an audience. I always feel a bit awkward when I just get on stage, belt out a ballad, and don’t have any real story to tell about it. It seems stingy and rude somehow to sing a ballad and not place it respectfully in it’s moment in the past, present, and future.
Knee-to-Knee is a project that will be ongoing throughout my life and I hope that it continues to grow and evolve as I learn more and more ballads, and not just the one’s collected by Cecil Sharp. I recently sat down with Bobby McMillon and he had some songs that I absolutely plan to add to my collection but I am hyper focused on English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians right now so I could not allow myself to be distracted. I am also getting more comfortable using technology as an outlet for organizing all of the information I have been gathering and a platform from which to communicate it to a larger audience. The website itself, beyond the initial set up, has been easier to maneuver through than I thought it would be. Online research has been a dream and there is SO MUCH data out there literally at your fingertips. Right now I am learning how to edit and post some of the voice recordings I have made of Mother teaching me a ballad, me practicing a ballad, and some tales told about the ballads. With the resources from this grant, I was able to get a smart phone with fairly decent voice and video recording capabilities and an awesome laptop that it is taking a bit of time for me to figure out. I don’t want someone else to do any of this for me…teaching myself to fish as it were.
Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
This is my FAVORITE Rob Amberg print taken on the front porch of Slick’s store. The store was on what was then my grandfather’s property but run by a man named Clarence Gunter. The ruins of this store are on what is now my property, covered in kudzu and slowly sliding down the bank. I bought this print from Rob and have been trying to convince him, since then, to come and do a Sodom Laurel Album Revisited…we are still characters over here and the comparisons would be FACINATING.
Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar is one of the more EPIC ballads for a number of reasons. LTaFE is one of the few ballads in this series that I knew prior to beginning the project.
LTaFE is a little more, as Mother says, long-winded. Most of the ballads are kindly short because, well, sometimes there really CAN be too much of a good thing. Not that I want to state the obvious or anything, but most folks, especially nowadays, have a pretty short attention span. With so much entertaining information flashing out at us from screens everywhere we look, a ballad has to be something pretty darn special to capture even a moment of the average person’s time. Arcane poetry from hundreds of years ago sang in a minor tune without music and most likely out of key is a hard sell on the best of days. As I have said in the past, ballads are what you would call ‘an acquired taste.’
I fell in love with the story in Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar early on and learned it almost without trying to. The biggest issue was figuring out how to control my breath…which is harder than it sounds. The collected version in Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians is … pretty close to the one that I remember. I found a beautiful version online in a German collection and I absolutely love some of the extra verses that puts some flesh on the story as a whole. https://ingeb.org/songs/lordthom.html . I especially like verses 1,2, 3, 4 7, and 15.
1. Lord Thomas was a bold forester
And the lodge-keeper of the king's deer;
Fair Ellender was a lady gay,
Lord Thomas, he loved her dear.
2. Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender
Sat all day on a hill;
When night had come, and sun was gone,
They'd not yet said their fill.
3. Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest
And Ellen took it ill:
"Oh, I will never marry me a wife
Against my family's will."
4. "If you will never wed thee a wife
A wife will never wed thee!"
So he rode home to tell his mother
And knelt upon his knee.
7. He dressed himself all in his best,
His merry men all in white;
And every town that he passed through
They took him to be some knight.
15. She turned around and dressed in white
Her sisters dressed in green,
And every town that they rode through
They took her to be some queen.
Mother says that Cas felt that Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar was an especially important ballad to pass down. She remembers learning this song one day when she was 16 or 17 years old and she was driving Cas to Marshall. The verses to the song are woven into the curves, climbs, and drops as they clung to the sides of the mountains on the winding road. Mother says she can’t cross over Davis Hill without thinking of this song and can hear Cas singing it clear as day. Another favorite memory mother has about Cas singing Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar at Jonesboro….but that is a story for HER to tell.
The story of my relationship with Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendar is wrought with hilarious little moments. Given that I loved this song from the start, it is not hard to imagine that I misunderstood much of what was going on in the story due to my being a TODDLER. Let’s start with the first line, “Mother, O Mother, come riddle my sport.” To me, this referred to an active, sport type competition wherein riddles (the word kind) played a big part. When “…they took him to be some king,” and “…they took her to be some queen,” I thought this meant that many different locals from many different villages physically TOOK them to the courthouse to make them a king or a queen. I felt this to be unreasonable because they were on their way somewhere and how in the world did they have enough time to be made a queen, rule for even a little while, and still make the wedding on time. When Lord Thomas takes Fair Ellendar by the lily white hand and leads her across the hall, I saw a ranch style home where a bedroom and a bathroom might be ‘across the hall’ from each other. My favorite, and most mysterious, though, was the brown girl. In reality, this is a reference to when the Normans overthrew the Saxons, and a slightly more swarthy bunch had taken over and the ‘fair’ folk were no longer the ruling class. In my mind, she was an African Princess in full feathery regalia prancing about and stealing another woman’s man. She was more beautiful and interesting to me than Fair Ellendar and I never understood why Lord Thomas did not love her more from the start. From the mouth of babes… Even though I know now that to ‘riddle my sport’ is to tell me what to do and to ‘take her to be some queen’ is really just THINKING that someone is a queen, I still see the brown girl as an African Princess!
Pretty Saro
Vergie, Cas’ wife. She was 16 years younger than him.
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020.
Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
I’ve heard all kinds of stories from Mother since we started this project. You may be thinking that I should have been recording all of them and posting them for posterity…and the enjoyment of all. Well, although it IS kind of nice to have some of those memories all for myself, I luckily recorded one of the best which I will paraphrase here. I will post it soon, promise!
Cas Wallin was born in 1903, so when Cecil Sharp wandered though in 1916, Cas would have been a strapping lad of 13. I like to imagine that he wandered through during some of all that collecting that was going on. Mother said that his brothers Lee (b. 1889, m. Berzilla), Jeter (b. 1899) and Chappel (b. 1898) were all off at Tan Yard Gap, which was between Sodom and Hot Springs, logging the American Chestnuts out of what would become a part of Pisgah National Forest (established in 1916). Granny Dell (b.1898) and her sister Berzilla (b. 1894) also worked at the logging camp as washer women and dish washers. Cecil missed out on meeting a lot of prolific ballad singers because many locals were working off, fighting in World War I, or logging. Hot Springs was a days walk from home so most folks would stay at the camp while they were working. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that camp. I’ll bet the music and songs flowed freely!
Cas came from a very musical family. So let’s start out with Hugh and Rosa (known to future generations as Granny Roz). They marry and have sons Mitch and Thomas Jefferson Wallin. Hugh died and Rosa then marries John Bullman, and they have a daughter Mary Bullman - later Sands - (b. 1872-1949) and Sonny Bullman. Mary’s half brother Thomas Jefferson Wallin goes on to have several children, including Robert Lee Wallin, Chappel Wallin, and Jeter Wallin and Cas Wallin. So Mary Sands was Cas’ aunt…his father’s half sister. Cool huh? They all loved music and a long running rumor within the family is that Mitch was one hell of a fiddle player. Of course they all sang in church and Cas eventually became a self taught choir director. How wonderful and rare that I get to know little details about people born over a hundred years ago. All of that kind of information really speaks to the cultural anthropologist in me and is further proof that no matter how much water goes under the bridge, humanity really hasn’t changed that much. It is sweet to think that one of the reasons that Lee and Berzilla fell in love was their common interest in all things ballads…or maybe she fell in love with the ballads because Lee and his family were such a musical bunch. Funnily enough, I found online somewhere that Sharp thought Mitch to be a poor singer and a worse fiddle player because he improvised too much to line out. LOL - I don’t think Mr. Sharp enjoyed a good old crooked tune and no accounting for taste!
Pretty Saro was one of Cas’ signature songs and I posted a video of him singing it on my ‘lyrics’ page. Mother says that she learned this song after Decoration at the picnic when she was 8-10 years old. Decoration Day is usually held on a Sunday in June. Our family holds ours on the first Sunday of June every single year and NO BODY has the excuse of not knowing we were all getting together. Decoration Day is an important Appalachian tradition where families gather at the graveyard to place fresh flowers on graves and honor the memory of passed loved ones. Even though the day is meant to commemorate the dead, spending time with family members (some traveling from far away) is also an important focus of this yearly reunion. After the service, everyone gets together for a big pot luck picnic with massive amounts of food, good conversation, and maybe even a little music/singing. The picnic after Decoration would be the perfect opportunity for an older member of the community to pass on an old love song to the next generation!
I want to give props on this song to my father-in-law Joe Penland. He also learned this song from Cas and I have heard him sing it at many a ballad swap!
Fine Sally
This video of me singing ‘Fine Sally’ (7:27 - 11:09) back in October, 2020 (which is when I officially learned this song) was for a virtual library fundraiser. I also sing Awake, Awake (0:19 - 3:03) and Soldier Traveling from the North (15:21 - 18:12). I talk about this project and how much it means to me, my family, and my community in Part 1. Thank you Phillip Solomon for all the things!
aka: A Rich Irish Lady/The Fair Damsel from London/Sally and Billy/The Sailor from Dover/Pretty Sally.
‘Fine Sally’ is a ballad that I was familiar with but had never actually learned. In EFSftSA, our version of ‘Fine Sally’ can be found under ‘The Brown Girl’ in the table of contents. Upon starting to research the song, I found out that this is yet another ballad that branches off into two, each with many versions of its own. For non-academic, simplicity only reasons, I will deem one branch ‘Fine Sally’ and the other branch ‘The Brown Girl’. Each story is told from Sally’s perspective. In ‘Fine Sally,’ she is a rich lady from London but in ‘The Brown Girl,’ she is too brown to be worthy of her own true love. Both have tragic endings where one or the other of the lovers threatens to dance on the grave of their beloved. Ah, romance. Both ballads have a pronounced ‘broad side’ ring to them…a broadside ballad being one that was mass produced in the 16th and 17th centuries as entertaining little ditties for the common man. The tabloids of the day, you might say.
‘The Brown Girl’ is the sister song of the version I learned and feels like a different song altogether. It had such a fascinating story, though, and piqued my interest so much that ‘Fine Sally’ itself got a little sidelined for a moment. Just to follow that thread to the end, ‘The Brown Girl’ (Roud 180 and Child 295) is about a woman scorned because her skin is too brown. Her lover sends her a Dear Jane letter wherein he breaks things off. Then later he finds himself love sick and calls to her to come and restore him with her love. She laughs at his bedside and states that she will dance on his grave. Love it.
‘Fine Sally,’ on the other hand, is about a rich lady who scorns the advances of a young doctor. Sally pays for that decision later when she falls ill and he is called “…for want of a cure.” The rueful young doctor is the one who will be doing the grave dancing. As I have said before, for all of their enduring through the generations, ballads are malleable in the hands and minds of each ballad singer who chooses to belt them out. Though the stories are centuries old, they are still relevant, to be made current and fresh by each of us as we forge our individual links in the generations long chain. Each ballad singer who has passed these songs down had life experiences, social morays, religious beliefs, and community expectations that shaped which ballads survived and in what condition. Allow me to speculate here and say that perhaps the woman in ‘The Brown Girl’ was a bit too aggressive and the story evolved to attempt to be a bit more of a moral lesson for women.
One of the things that I ADORE about this project is that I get to listen to Mother reminisce about her past. She gets this faraway look in her eyes and describes everything in such detail that I feel like I am there with her all those years ago. I eat up these story telling performances put on just for me. We laugh A LOT, branch off into non-ballad singing topics, and speak about our ancestors like they are just passed instead of dead for a hundred years.
Mother learned ‘Fine Sally’ from Cas Wallin (One of these days I promise I am going to tell you all about how Cas, Mary Sands and us are all related) while sitting on the church steps near the old Sodom Store. The kids roamed in a pack in those days and they had all been sitting in the shade having a soda. All of the other children had gotten bored and wandered off when Cas offered to ‘learn’ her a ballad. She was intrigued because of its unusual cadence and Cas’ ability to hold uncomfortable notes. Of course Cas never had any true vocal training, but he was still the church choir director. Mother and I both enjoyed Cas’ ability to keep a solid beat but at the same time stress crazy notes and dance all around the tune itself.
Cas also told her the story of how Mary Sands came to be a ballad contributor to EFSftSA. Twice a year, Mary Sands and her brother Mitch would go to Greeneville, TN to sell vegetables and animals. Greeneville is about 31 miles from here and it used to take them two days of hard travel to get there. The pair headed out on July 31, 1916 and stopped to spend the night at Allenstand, which was a little less than half way there. Cecil Sharp happened to be staying there too, and she ended up singing ‘Fine Sally’ for him that night. On their return trip, they once again stopped to stay at Allenstand and on August 5, 1916 Mary Sands sang ‘My Dearest Dear’ for Cecil Sharp. Mother says she always loved this story because Mr. Sharp caught them by chance and in that moment decided the ballad singing fate of my mother, whose mother was being born at the same time she was singing ‘My Dearest Dear.’ Cecil Sharp later visited Mary Sands at her home in the community that was then referred to as Whiterock, near the Presbyterian Hospital. When he came back the next time in 1918, she was 8.5 months pregnant and only sang 3 to 4 more songs. She did introduce him to some of her other family members who also sang ballads. Mother found out a lot of this information from Sharp’s diaries. I was fascinated when I heard there were DIARIES, but mother says it is just a bunch of complaining about the primitive mode of travel, his overall hatred of foot logs, and, most of all, the terrible food. I KNOW he isn’t talking about biscuits and gravy or soup beans and corn bread!
I always loved this song because it was about a girl named Sally, and my best friend from kindergarten is named Sally. 40 some-odd years later, I still think Ms. Sally is mighty fine!
The Journal Continues…
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
So this may be my favorite picture of me of all time. I am about four years old and am holding the infamous jumping cat belonging to Granny Dell. I remember Rob Amburg walking around the corner of Dell’s porch, dropping to one knee, and taking this picture.
I feel like I am living in many separate multiverses all at once. Raising a teenager, getting a promotion, reaching middle age, trying to do my part to pass on an important aspect of my fading culture…all of these can be overwhelming during a normal year. But put it all together, mix it up and throw it under the umbrella of a PANDEMIC?! Well, duck and cover is about the best you can do. Although I have fallen a bit behind in my POSTING, mother and I have continued her mentoring, my apprenticing, and our meetings. When we first conceived of this project, we were so excited to do this knee-to-knee thing right. My mother is, and has always been, a little twitchy. She likes to be doing or going all the time and to pin her down is something of a feat. Knee-to-knee and social distancing do NOT belong in the same sentence. The attempts at zoom, the phone calls, the emails, the texts, and the bundling up to meet outdoors during one of the most frigid and LONG winters ever sort of wore us down a bit. But Spring is on its way and we are feeling a familiar (and WELCOME) rush of inspiration. We have had the recent opportunity to sit on the porch comfortably and stare at each other, as it were. So it is back to business and full speed ahead! Please stay tuned!
Young Hunting
From r to l: Mother (Sheila Kay Adams), Me and Donna Ray Norton at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in June, 2018. I got to sing Young Hunting on the Mall! Such an amazing experience. Donna and I got to go into the ‘guts’ of the American History Museum to see a mouth-bow her grandfather had donated to the Smithsonian in the 1970’s.
aka: Earl Richard/Henry Lee/Love Henry/The Proud Girl
“Oh I can't come down and I won't come down
And nor I come into your arms at all
For a finer girl than ten of you
Is a-waiting beneath the town wall.” —Tony Rose
“I shan't come down and I won't come down
And stay all night with thee.
There's a girl by the city wall
I love far better than thee, thee,
I love far better than thee.” —June tabor
It’s always the lyrics that get me. One of my favorite things to do right now is recite aloud a stanza or two in my ‘poetry voice’ and let the power of the WORDS give me that little chill down my spine. As I have said before, I fall in love with a particular song not only for the fabulous story it tells, but also because of that one certain spot where the words fit together just so. In Young Hunting, at least in the one I learned from mother, it was “Lie there, lie there, my own false love/‘till the flesh rots off’n your bones,/ and your little old wife in the old Scotland/ can mourn for your return, yes/ she can mourn for your return.” As I dug around on the Internet for information on Young Hunting, I found the above verses and they spoke to me. Even though, for the course of this year at least, I am sticking to the versions that were collected by my family (what I see as the ‘pure versions’), but I do plan on putting my own personal spin on some of the songs I learn by putting all the verses together that really tug at my heartstrings and have that sense of poetry that enamors me so.
According to Mother, she remembers that Cas’ wife, Vergie, was the one who remembered the words to this song. Although Vergie LOVED the ballads and had a very good memory for lyrics, she actually couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Each and every ballad Vergie sang was to the tune of Wayfaring Stranger. Mother decided she wanted to relearn Young Hunting to the CORRECT tune, so Phillip Rhodes’ wife, Jane, played her the melody, recorded in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, on the piano.
I don’t remember anyone singing this during my childhood and I don’t even remember Mother singing it until the last 15 or 20 years. It was initially the tune that caught my attention because it has all these crazy whirls and twirls that I love in a ballad. Then I heard the lyrics. Once again the woman is the aggressor but this time she does not lament her ruination but instead gets her revenge in the end. I never really understood the lyrics at the end that refer to the talking bird in the willow tree and considered leaving them out. But as I read about the song I saw multiple references about the bird and how old ballads, especially ones that originate in Scotland, often spoke of talking birds as a ‘messenger from the spirit world’ or even the ‘soul of the victim transformed.’ Magic and mystery! Murder and malice! Also, there is our reference to a Willow tree again. This time, the Willow tree not only represents sorrow and the spirit world, it also symbolizes someone bitter, hollow and rotten on the inside. I decided to keep this entire section intact because I’ll not be the one to erase an important verse from a song, leaving it dangling and dead for future generations. Not me…No way.
Young Hunting has become a favorite and I consider it sort of ‘mine’ to sing at swaps. Usually, we ballad singers accept that other singers pretty much ‘own’ certain songs and to sing that song before they get a chance to without expressed permission is, as they say, fightin’ words. I would never sing Single Girl or Young Emily when I am singing with my partner in crime Donna Ray Norton. Anytime she sings Black is the Color or Young Hunting when I’m not even there makes her feel like she has to later confess, as though she cheated on me with my songs LOL. Now if Mother or Bobby M. sing a song that we consider ‘ours,’ we can just get what we get and not pitch a fit. They are the ‘elders,’ tee hee, and can sing WHATEVER they want WHENEVER they want. The culture of ballad singers is a little known but still vital part of the ‘ballad singing scene.’ Petty jealousies, sly slights, competitions, and little spats are not unusual but you let any of us catch someone else talking bad about another of us. There are so few of young(ish) local singers that we need to love and respect each other and be glad we are all out there beating feet to keep this tradition alive! Thank you my sisters and brothers…if not for y’all, not near enough people would get to learn about this important part of our tradition.
Soldier Traveling from the North
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg, 2020. Photograph courtesy of the photographer.
aka…The Light Dragoon/The Bold Dragoon /The Trooper and the Maid
I am learning so much working on this project. Not only the songs and how to sing them but also about the sheer HISTORY (or HERstory as it were and either way) that is held within the lyrics. I always knew this ballad as “Soldier Traveling from the North.” One thing that I already knew peripherally but not practically was that every ballad had many versions that go by many different names. Mother has had to go through Sharp’s book and tell me which ballad title matched the title I was familiar with. I think I like “The Trooper and the Maid” best. I looked up Dragoon, and found out that there are two definitions…a Noun and a Verb. As a noun, a Dragoon is a member of any of several cavalry regiments in the British army. As a verb, to dragoon someone is to coerce them into doing something. A beautiful play on words I think!
As I researched this song, I learned many themes have been made obscure by the passage of time, especially when it comes to conk-shells and silver bells. In the version I learned, the line is “When silver bells and conk-shells stand, then you and I will marry.” I never stopped to wonder what exactly that meant. I’ve always just sort of took the language within ballads for granted and accepted them at face value. I imagined conk-shells were conch shells and silver bells were the kind that tinkled when you shook them. Not so…The line in Sharp’s book is: “O When shall we meet again/Or when shall we get married?/When conk-shells turn to silver bells,/O then, my love, we’ll marry.” Interestingly enough, a conk-shell is actually a COCKLE shell, which, in Scotland, is an edible burrowing bivalve mollusk with a strong ribbed shell…and (also in Scotland) a silver bell is a flower. Apparently, ‘when conk-shells turn to silver bells’ is a traditional put off, kind of like ‘when hell freezes over.’ Finally, I found out that this song has been much discussed and has caused much disgust. Why? Because the FEMALE is the aggressor. While that may seem tame by today’s standards, it was taboo and more than a little risque a couple hundred years ago! Many ballad singers (mostly the male ones) were so put off by this song that they made up and added verses where the Soldier/Trooper/Dragoon was the one to initiate the naughty bits. I’ve always loved the haunting tune of Soldier Traveling from the North, but now I love it for all of the secret little messages held within.
Awake, Awake
Dillard Chandler.
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
Awake, Awake (a.k.a. Arise Arise/ The Drowsy Sleeper/Silver Dagger/Waking Dreams);
How funny that this song is called Waking Dreams…because it has literally been dogging my thoughts, awake and asleep, since mother sang it for me in my front yard. I know that people get songs stuck in their head all the time…hell, there is even a SpongeBob episode dealing with this very phenomenon (I have a 14 year old son, ok?!), but have you ever gotten a BALLAD stuck in your head? It’s a little like reading too many Stephen King books in a row; you start to feel like you are living in some kind of alternate dimension where the rules are just a little bit different. Like at any moment you may start using words like ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in regular speech and you start carrying a ‘little pen knife’ around everywhere just in case.
In fact, I am pretty much ballad-centric right now and they are the only songs I am really listening to or singing. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart! Poor Bobby McMillon, having, like, a million ballads in his head all the time. One very interesting and unexpected development has been that I am singing ballads when I am working. You might be thinking, “And?” Well, that is the natural habitat of the ballad. They have not always been sung on stage by homegrown mountain folk for public consumption. Having grown up during a time when ballads had become more performance and less community based, it was almost a surprise to greet them 1:1…just me and a song getting down to some very physical menial labor, the sun on my neck and sweat running like rivers down my body. Or hanging out clothes to the rhythm of the song of the day.
So let’s explore the ‘guts’ of this song, aka the story. A girl’s lover has come tapping on her window just before dawn, emphatically wanting to know how, exactly, she can sleep when her soul mate is about to be gone forever. You see, she has been betrothed to another, as evidenced by the paper her mother holds in her hand whilst ‘in her bed at rest.’ Dad is prepared to use a pistol to seal the deal. Many marriages were set up for political or financial gain with little thought to the happiness of the couple, especially the female part of the equation. My favorite stanza in Awake, Awake, the one that gave me that first spark of love is when he finally realizes that she is lost to him and he laments, saying, “I’ll go down in some lonesome valley,/I’ll spend my days, my months, my years,'/And I’ll eat nothing but green willow,/And I’ll drink nothing but my tears.” It made me wonder, “why green willow? Is it poisonous?” Actually, it isn’t because, after all, aspirin was traditionally made from willow bark, right?! The willow shows up quite often in ballads from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The willow symbolizes many different things, but in this song it is meant to represent the extreme sorrow of losing your true love. Arranged marriages were common in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales up until the first third of the 1700’s, when many girls made the decision to elope with their lovers, wanting a love match rather than an arranged one with a veritable stranger. Our girl in Awake, Awake makes that difficult decision. Awake, Awake would have been sung by travelling balladeers, telling the tale far and wide of a new way of thinking that was spreading across the realm.
The Daemon Lover
Mother has HUNDREDS of badges, lanyards, name tags, and buttons from her many performances and travels.
The Daemon Lover (No. 35; page 244 i)
I learned The Daemon Lover as The Little Farmer Boy. It is also widely known as The House Carpenter. During my Master’s program, I discovered that this ballad is one of the most well known and has MANY versions and variations. Cecil Sharp collected 22 versions of this song alone. The internet absolutely TEEMS with different versions, including ones from Joan Baez and Doc Watson. How fabulous that there is a version from my very own family thanks to Cecil Sharp…but how daunting that I have to relearn it given how different it is than the version I became familiar with as a child. Mother learned Little Farmer Boy from Dellie Chandler Norton and I have decided to keep the first couple of verses because I think it sets the story up better and, to me, the story within the ballad is the most important thing.
Every ballad I learn, or relearn as the case may be, always has a hook…one verse that stands out from the rest. I absolutely love the poetry in the ballads, the way the words fit together so musically and sometimes even inspire such a physical response as goosebumps or the hair raising up on the back of the neck. In both of the versions that I know, my favorite verse is the same: “O take me back, O take me back, O take me back cried she, For I’m to young and lovely by far, To rot in the salt water sea!” That verse rolls around in my mind like the waves of the ocean. I can smell the salt water and feel the lurch of the ship. For me, this song’s story is about a girl who chooses the wrong man and is destined for an eternity of torment because she was lured away with promises of wealth and privilege. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
My Dearest Dear
Mary Sands
My Dearest Dear (No. 77, page 13 ii)
I never heard My Dearest Dear as a child. When my grandfather Ervin, Mother’s father, lay dying in the hospital in 1998, she ‘caught’ some lyrics in her mind from Doug Wallin’s version of The Time Draws Near. She later referred to Cecil Sharp’s book to be reminded of the full song and found Mary Sands’ version of My Dearest Dear. For mother and me, ballads not only tell stories, they also define moments in time and help us to deal with strong emotions. When I am mad at my husband I sing I Never Will Marry, and when I am feeling particularly powerful and sassy, I sing Farmer’s Curst Wife. Mother felt the power in My Dearest Dear during a crushing and unexpected death…and it helped her to cope. My Dearest Dear is now our go to when someone has passed and we want to take a moment to honor and remember them. When I sing this song, I close my eyes and my heart fills with love and longing, I can feel it pulsing through my veins.
My Dearest Dear was collected by Mary Sands, my maternal grandmother’s aunt…my great, great aunt…on the day of my grandmother’s birth, August 5, 1916. Actually, it was the ONLY version collected by Cecil Sharp. There are more versions of My Dearest Dear’s’ sister song, The True Lover’s Farewell, No. 114, page 113 ii.
The new verse I am adding to my version came from Tommy Jarrell, a fiddle and banjo player extraordinaire from Mount Airy, NC. Mother and I spent a lot of time with Tommy in the 70’s and I have fond memories of listening to the amazing music that happened there. I fell in love with Bruce Molsky then and he became my favorite fiddle player for LIFE (although I now also include my brother in law, fiddle player Casey Driessen). Given that mother learned banjo from Tommy and Bruce learned fiddle from Tommy, I’ve always thought that they were the perfect match, a symbiosis of sound. It has been many years (maybe 20? 25?) since I have heard them together, but I still remember quite clearly the absolute chills it brought me. I would like to put that out into the universe…Mother, can you and Bruce PLEASE do a Tommy Jarrell compilation before it is too late?! And can I sit in on every second?!
Derby’s Ram
The exact way that I remember Cas and Vergie Wallin from when I was a little kid in the 1970’s.
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
Darby’s Ram (a.k.a: The Derby Ram / The Ram of Derbish Town / The Yorkshire Tup); No. 141; page 184 ii
Recording of mother singing the song, recorded by Sam Gleeves
The irony that Derby’s Ram is the first ballad I learn on this journey is not lost on me. Although this song is not among the ballads that I was drawn to as a child, it is among the first that I remember being sung by the old timers. When mother and I initially discussed the ballads that I would learn during this process, I came to the realization that Cas Wallin and I have similar tastes in ballads and he is the one that I remember most clearly. He and his wife Vergie loom large in my mind, though by all accounts they were both quite diminutive in size. Cas had a huge voice and an even bigger personality. I remember he had a funny laugh and twinkling blue eyes. I remember Vergie as a skinny, curly haired lady with a soft voice and a true love of children, perhaps because she was never blessed with offspring. I mentioned to mother that my memories of Vergie portray her as a meek, sweet, huggy person who told me how great I was all the time. She was forever commenting that if she had ever had children, she would want one just like me. Mother laughed and told me she was a tough old bird who could be sassy and did not hesitate to be hateful when the situation called for it. Mother said Vergie simply loved me and thought I was an amazing kid. We spent a lot of time with Cas and Vergie. Given their childless state, she and other younger relatives saw to their care.
I love Cas stories best of all because they are always funny and tend toward the risqué. I clearly remember hearing Cas sing Derby’s Ram. It is a song that first praises the magnificence of a huge ram and then discusses the butchering of said ram. I hated that song. I would narrow my eyes and stare at Cas, wishing he had never started singing it. I would think to myself, “Old man, I ain’t never learning THAT damn song.” Like with most ballads, my imagination would kick in and I could see, hear, smell the entire story laid out before me. I thought of Derby’s Ram as a serious song about murder and animal cruelty. For almost 50 years I have avoided it at all costs. Mother, with her infinite wisdom and sick sense of humor, chose it as the first. Heaving a mighty sigh, I reluctantly agreed, consigning myself to suffer. Imagine my surprise, no DELIGHT, when I realized that it was a really sweet, funny song with a catchy tune. I realized that I had never listened beyond the ‘…washed away in the blood’ verse. This project is bringing back so many memories of my toddlerhood and childhood. Then, I saw ballads in a sort of fairy tale sense, stories told that did not always have a happy ending but that always sparked my overactive imagination.
Derby (the pronunciation got changed to DARBY somewhere along the way) is a town in the center of England, 113 miles from London. Derby’s Ram, the traditional folk tale turned ballad, is thought to be at least from the 1760’s, if not before. Derby itself is very proud of the song and even has a stone statue of a ram in its town center. The ram has become a mascot for many groups within the town. Also, there are many versions of Derby’s Ram, including ones by Grandpa Jones and Merle Travis. The most shocking version is a sea shanty on one of my son’s favorite video games, Assassin’s Creed. Ain’t that truly where the rubber meets the road!?
Oh yeah…A yeoman is a highly regarded, highly paid servant or a person in the military. I don’t know why they, in particular, would scoot for a place to hide. And a nickel would be worth about $2.00 now LOL.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Update 3/20/21
The most hilarious thing happened yesterday during a visit at mother’s house (we have all had our SHOT!) with Bobby McMillon. I found out that I had totally mis-heard a lyric in Derby’s Ram and we had a good old laugh about it on Mother’s front porch. When Mother sang it for me, I recorded it on my audio app and transcribed the verses later into my website. It wasn’t “…sending all the YEOMEN in England a scootin’ for a place to hide!” I thought that line ridiculous from the start but accepted it as just one of them ballad things. I happened to mention to Bobby that I simply did not understand the reference. Bobby said, looking confused and mildly disgusted, “Well yes, there’s a reason for that…you have the wrong damn words.” In fact, it was actually “…sending all the EWES in England a scootin’ for a place to hide.” What threw me is that Mother pronounced EWES as YO’s, which Bobby assured me had dialectic roots in Scotland. I made a fabulous recording of him explaining this to me which I have included below. Be sure you listen until the end because my big old horse laugh gets all up in the way of hearing the very best part. Maybe one day I will get this editing thing down a little better. Once we figured out the problem, I realized that we had just shared an in the moment experience where a ballad could have been changed for generations to come just because the collector heard a word wrong. Plus, the verse just makes so much more SENSE now.
Starting the Process
Eskey’s Ridge
Our first meeting happened just as it should…on the front porch at my mother’s, sitting in the porch swing, watching summer come to life on the peaks and valleys of the sweeping vista spread out in front of us. After much paper rustling, page turning, cigarette smoking, laughing, listening, talking and generally enjoying each other’s company, we managed to make a schedule for the songs I am going to learn. No lie, I suddenly realized what a daunting task this project has presented me with. I am excited, of course, but also a little nervous. What if I am not up to it? What if I end up embarrassing myself and, even worse, embarrassing mother? What if Donna Ray (Donna Ray Norton) would have been the better candidate? If you haven’t guessed it yet, I do have a nasty habit of second guessing myself. I want to be perfect at all things from the outset and, if I am not, then, by Ned, I ain’t doing it. I am also struggling with some feelings of guilt that I haven’t already tried to do something like this with mother before now. How could I have wasted so much time? Hopefully, throughout this project, I can learn how to give my self some grace…a learning curve as it were.
SIDE NOTE: Eskey’s Ridge came from my cousin Donna Ray and I calling Mother S.K (and her mother L.J).
Getting the Grant!
(NCArts.org)
I think Mother and I had both become sort of fatalistic about the possibility of our getting the Grant. Ballad singers got it last year and, given that NC is packed full of AWESOME traditional practices, we figured this would not be our year. I had enjoyed the process so much and was inspired to continue working on the project one way or another.
The application was due in early March…and Covid-19 appeared on the scene shortly thereafter. I piddled around the house, started my garden, hung out my clothes to dry, fist fought (jk) with the kid over virtual learning, and learned how to make sourdough bread. Thoughts of the grant would sometimes wander through my mind but my hopes for getting it (and for mankind in general) had waned and I figured that our chances were slim or none. Then, on April 29th, 2020 I got a phone call from Mother and, though at first she was squealing too much for me to understand her, I finally realized that…WE GOT IT!! 2020 had been shaping up to be such a downer year that it was a sight for sore eyes to have one positive thing to look forward to, something to be inspired by, something to distract me and ground me while the rest of the world is shattered with social unrest.
The Journal Begins!
“Nevertheless tradition dies hard. Memory may weaken, but the love of the songs remains and with a little encouragement it springs up anew. To many a singer it was a great delight to be able to re-learn from these volumes a song that he had sung to Cecil Sharp over thirty years ago and had since forgotten. Thus, a song, originating in England and carried to America, lives there by oral tradition for some hundreds of years; it is written down and taken back to England by Cecil Sharp; then some thirty years later the song is carried back in printed form to the country of its adoption and takes on a new lease of life. Such are the devious ways of tradition.” Maud Karpeles, introduction to EFSftSA
Writing the Grant
To some, she is esteemed NEA Award winner Sheila Kay Adams, ballad singer for the stars. To others, she is SK, Eskey, Seely, or a mountain variation that sounds like Sheeuhluh but doesn’t translate well into written speech. To many she is a performer, a teacher, a cousin, a sister, a friend. To some she may even be an enemy. When I was born she was simply the light of my world. Then she was Mommy during my toddler times, Mama during my childhood years, and then the more hip Mom when I got to middle school age. My brothers still call her Mama (they still call me Sissy). When I reached the wise old age of 16 or so, I decided to call her Mother to underscore the fact that she was the jailer and I, the prisoner, in a cage forged by my own teenage angst. I still call her Mother because I think it’s funny. She has never expressed what she would like to be called other than giving me such a smack across the face when I bucked up to her that one time and threatened to call her a name that rhymes with Witch. Never tried THAT again.
I have been hearing ballads and other traditional mountain music since I was in the womb. I sang on stage for the first time when I was three years old. It was at the Sodom, Laurel Folk Festival in 1974 and, although now at almost 50 I can barely remember ANYTHING, I have a very clear memory of that tiny moment in time. I was running back and forth across the stage area where mother was performing. I remember her blah, blah, blah until she reached down, picked me up under the arms and lifted me up to the microphone, my legs dangling in the summer heat. “Sing, gal,” she said, and I belted out Mary Had a Little Lamb. I remember the bright lights and the featureless audience as they roared their applause. Mother set me down again and off I ran to more of her blah, blah blah. The memory ends there but it was just the beginning of my ballad singing journey.
Ballads…well, mother singing ballads…has given me many opportunities and amazing experiences that would not been available to me otherwise. I’ve always loved the attention that being Sheila Kay Adams’ daughter has afforded me. I got to go backstage at Merle Fest and meet famous people, I got to travel all over the United States to festivals and performances and I learned just enough ballads to be able to sing on stage when necessary. I’ve been clogging all my life, love me a good fiddle tune and have developed many lifelong relationships with many different sorts of folks. My ballad singing cousin/sister/partner in crime Donna Ray Norton and I started our relationship based in ballad singing but now my life would be so empty without her and her family. But this project brings something a little different to the table and I am so excited to begin what I have come to think of as Phase II of my ballad singing life. Also, this project sort of hems mother up long enough that I can actually spend some quality time with her! Sometimes that feels a little like herding cats.
I was thrilled when mother approached me regarding this grant. My cousin Donna Ray, who is way more active on the ballad singing circuit, and I had started doing some projects together over the past couple of years, so I was already feeling inspired to learn some more songs and maybe try to take it ‘on the road’ as it were. Mother and I were both energized by the prospect of working together for the next year and felt like we had a pretty good idea brewing.
I am embarrassed to say that I did not already own copy of the English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians by Cecil Sharp (henceforth to be referred to as EFS). Having grown up in this rich tradition, performing all of my life, and gotten a MA in Appalachian Studies…I had never so much as read the introduction. Mother was a little shocked, but she tried not to let the disgust show too much. “Well, I guess you’re just going to have to buy you a copy, being as I ain’t giving mine up.” I did not understand the smug look on her face until two weeks later when I received my copy. There, stated clear as a bell at the bottom…’With a New Introduction by Sheila K. Adams.’ For the love of God. I made the decision then and there that if we managed, by hook or by crook, to get this grant I was going to willfully and with great determination pick up that ballad singing torch and finally do it right.
We both spent weeks on our individual parts, reading them out loud to each other over the phone, emailing text back and forth, and being inspired by the thoughts and writings of the other. I read and reread the introduction to EFS several times, annotating, starring and underlining my favorite passages. At one point, I felt like Cecil Sharp was talking directly to me and I started to believe that he had written the book just for me, generations later, just needing to be reminded of the tune and words to ballads he collected from my family right here in my very own community over one hundred years ago. I wrote and rewrote, begging my sister to edit and re-edit. Fun stuff. But I was a little sad when it was all over because I had so enjoyed the process. We sent the application off in early March and crossed our fingers.
Welcome!
Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.
My mother started teaching me ballads in utero. No kidding. I would absolutely swear that I have known the words to ‘Little Margaret’ since before memory. Ballads, ballad singing, performing ballads, being on stage, and traveling all around the U.S.A. were such an intrinsic part of my life that I never stopped to think about how amazingly awesome and special it is to have such an ancient tradition as a birth right. Isn’t it funny that a secular, tiny little aspect of my culture became the very foundation that I have built my life on? Going to festivals and other performances with mother when I was young gave me the confidence to travel later in my life, opening my eyes to a great big world that my ancestors and the purveyors of this tradition would never have dreamed to be possible. Ballads created in me a deep love for a good story and honed my imagination. Ballads offered me the opportunity for many adventures and I have led an exciting life because of them.
However….you know what else? Like many others who are given things at birth that they never had to work for, I took the ballads for granted. I always thought of mother (who happened to be the strongest, coolest, most amazing female EVER) as infinite…and immortal…and as having shoes it would be impossible for me to fill. We have both been coasting through life, expecting that SOME DAY we would get together…SOME DAY I would get serious about wanting to learn the songs and stories for real…SOME DAY. Life happened and the daily grind happened and love, hate, birth, death, rebirth, marriage, divorce, sunrise, sunset, and all manner of other things happened and me learning the ballads went to the FAR back burner. Then, this past Christmas, mother and I had a moment, an actual telepathic connection, wherein we locked eyes from across a crowded room and, together, decided that it was finally SOME DAY. We started the conversation later as I walked her to her car.
Have you ever felt like when you are on the wrong path, the universe keeps putting barriers up so that every step feels like beating your face against the wall? But when you get on the right path, the universe keeps opening door after door and easing the way into the future? After we had that initial conversation, the doors flew open. How can we afford to spend so much time together? NCArts Grant is how. Where will we find the massive amounts of time to spend together given mother’s work schedule as well as my job which doesn’t slow down until December and cranks right back up in March? Covid-19 is how. NOT that Covid-19 is a good thing (duh) but for mother and me it has been somewhat of a ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’ type event.
So here I am, almost 50 years old, barely able to remember what I went to the refrigerator for, trying to learn a ton of new ballads and, even more frightening, trying to learn how to use technology (ETC) to assure that this tradition does not falter during my generation. Of COURSE my generation would have to deal with the internet, youtube, twitter (which I still don’t quite understand), Facebook, cameras in your phone, websites, links, and, for the love of GOD, computer code in order to have a viable tradition to pass on. Geez. I hope I am up to the task.
Please don’t forget…this is a work in progress! Thanks to my wonderful sister and brother-in-law, I am maybe not belly crawling through figuring out this website thing, but I am still sort of just stumbling along. My hope is that as time passes, this website will evolve into something I (and NCArts, of course) can be proud of!
For better or worse, welcome to my journey!