23. Geordie (Folk-Songs of the South- 1925; Footnotes moved to the end of each version.)
23. GEORDIE (Child, No. 209)
Other American texts of this ballad have been printed as follows: — by Belden {Journal, xx, 319; Missouri); Shoemaker, p. 140 (Pennsylvania); Campbell and Sharp, No. 28 (North Carolina) ; cf. Pound, p. 11 ; Bulletin, Nos. 7, 9. They all belong to a single version (to which the West Virginia text also belongs), and show particular resemblances, as Belden remarked of his copy, to the eighteenth-century broadside "The Life and Death of George of Oxford" (Child, iv, 141; Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, vh, 70). This American version obviously comes from the form still current in England: see Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols, p. 32; Sharp and Marson, Folk-Songs from Somerset, 1, 5 ; Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 9 ; R. Vaughan Williams, Folk-Songs from the Eastern Counties, p. 47; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, 1, 164; 11, 27, 208; iv, 89, 332 (tunes); Kidson, Traditional Tunes, p. 24. To the same version belong "Maiden's (Maid's) Lamentation for her Georgy" (broadside, Pitts; slip, T. Birt; broadside, W. S. Fortey) and "The Life of Georgey" (broadsides: R. Evans, Chester, ca. 1831; H. Such, No. 80).
Comparison of " George of Oxford" with the current version shows one stanza in the West Virginia text (3) which cannot have come from anything in the black-letter piece, but which is represented in some of the traditional versions in Child (A 12, B 21, C 10, D 16, etc.). The inference is irresistible that "George of Oxford" is a literary rifacimento of a traditional form of the song, and this is confirmed by certain features of the black-letter text (e. g., lines 89-92) ; perhaps also by the fact that this text was to be sung "to a pleasant New Tune, called, Poor Georgy."
A. No local title. Communicated by Mrs. Hilary G. Richardson, Clarksburg, Harrison County, December 3, 1917; obtained from Mrs. Nancy McAtee. Printed, Journal, xxxii, 504.
1 Go saddle me up my milk-white steed,
Go saddle it full gaily,
Until I write [1] to the earthen sires,
To plead for the life of Georgie.
2 She rid till she came to the earthen sires' office,
So early in the morning;
She tumbled down on her bended knees,
Saying, " Spare me the life of Georgie."
3 There was an old man stepped up to her,
He looked as he was pleasing:
"0 pretty maid, if it lays in my power,
I'll spare you the life of Georgie."
4 The judge looked over his left shoulder,
He looked as if he was angry;
Says, "Now, pretty miss, you've come too late,
For Georgie he's condemned already."
5 "If Georgie ever trampled on the king's highway,
Or did he murder any?"
"He stole sixteen of the milk-white steeds,
And conveyed them away to the army."
6 Georgie he was hung in a white silk robe,
Such robes there was not many,
Because he was of that royal blood
And was loved by a virtuous lady.
1 Or ride.