In the Seaport- Dillingham (AR) 1959 REC Parler A
[My title. Fragment from: Ozark Folk Song Collection: Reel 318, Item 7. Collected by Mary Celestia Parler; transcribed by Nathaniel Lucy. An excerpt of the recording follows.
R. Matteson 2016]
Attie Dillingham: I don’t know what the name of it was.
Mary Celestia Parler: Oh well, nothing you can do. Who’d you learn it from?
AD: My mother sang this old song
In the Seaport - Sung by Attie Dillingham of Fayetteville, Arkansas on June 6, 1959.
Listen: http://digitalcollections.uark.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/OzarkFolkSong/id/4175/rec/2
In the seaport there lived a merchant
He had two sons and a daughter dear
A prince’s[1] boy who lived about them
And was her daughter’s dearest dear
While they were in their room a-courting
The youngest brother chanced to hear
He went and told his older brother
And thus deprived her of her dear
The next morning they rose early
A-hunting a-hunting we must go
(Humming)
When they returned from the wildwoods hunting
She inquired of her dearest dear
“Why do you ask?” they seemed to whisper
“Why do you thus examine me?”
The next morning she rose early
With a sad sigh and a bitter groan
She rode til she came to a patch of briars
And there she found him killed and thrown.
(Humming)
While I have breath with you I’ll stay
1. 'prentice boy