A Yorkshire Bite [Farmer and his Son]- Anon (NC) pre1943; Brown [C]
[From Brown Collection, my title. This version is from Volume 4 and is labeled A. I'm calling it Brown C. The title, "A Yorkshire Bite," is surely applied from version A and is not the title- i.e.- no title is given. This corresponds to verse 2 of version A.
R. Matteson 2013]
46. The Crafty Farmer
(Child 278)
This story of the highwayman outwitted exists in two forms: 'The Crafty Farmer' proper, which Child presents in a version found in various broadsides but which has seldom been reported from tradition since, and 'The Yorkshire Bite,' which Child mentions without giving a text but which appears frequently in tradition, especially in America. The former is reported from Devonshire (Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs 43), from Scotland (LL 236-7), and once in America, from West Virginia (FSS 166-8). The latter, often printed as a broadside or stall ballad (see Kittredge's bibliographical note, JAFL xxx 367), is reported from tradition in Norfolk (JFSS 11 174-5), Berkshire (FSUT 253-4), and Somerset (JFSS viii 180-2), and on this side of the water in Newfoundland (BSSN 45-6), Nova Scotia (SBNS 39-41). Maine (BBM 406-13), Vermont (NGMS 97-102, CSV 26-7), Massachusetts (JAFL xxiii 451-2, xxx 368-9), West Virginia (FSMEU 149-52), Tennessee (FSSH 137-9), North Carolina (FSSH 135-7), Georgia (FSSH 140, fragment only), Michigan (BSSM 382-4), and Illinois (ASb 118-19). As a rule the texts agree pretty closely — probably because they are not far removed from the stall prints — but Combs's West Virginia text is amusingly Americanized; the farmer becomes a Staunton (Virginia) merchant and his man a South Carolina Negro who at the end is commended by his master:
For you have put upon him
A South Carolina bite.
[C. 'Farmer and his Son.'] Anon. (NC) pre-1943 Brown C
[music upcoming]
'Come down, come down,' said a farmer to his son,
He made little money and his name was John.
'Here's a cow and take her to the fair,
For she's in good order and her I can spare.'