As Two Little Schoolboys Were Going To School- Hicks (VA) c1851 Davis DD
[My date, based on the "almost 80 years ago" given by Davis, which I assume is from the date collected. From: More Traditional Ballads from Virginia; Davis 1960. The last [2] footnote is mine as Davis didn't understand the stanza. The last stanza is part of the revenant ending found in Child B (Motherwell)
One area in Virginia (the Brown's Cove region, Albermarle and Green plus neighboring counties) became the repository for a specific version of this ballad (for another ballad see John Hazelgreen). From this region the Virginia Folk-Lore Society, under the direction of C. Alphonso Smith (who died in 1924) and later John Stone and Kyle Davis Jr., collected six texts. Additionally Sharp collected three in 1917; Scarborough- one; Davis again in More Ballads- five; Wilkinson- four; and Foss- one.
George Foss, who wrote an excellent article titled, From White Hall to Bacon Hollow, collected an excellent version from Robert Shiflett (see also Davis A from his sister), who was Raz Shiflett's son. Foss also did an interview with one informant, Marybird McAllister.
R. Matteson 2014]
THE TWA BROTHERS
(Child, No. 49)
Child prints ten versions of this ballad, one of the few known to him in an American version. It does not seem to persist in present-day tradition in either England or Scotland; at least it does not appear in either Margaret Dean-Smith's Survey or Gavin Greig's Last Leaves. Bronson (I, 384) confirms this observation. The ballad has often been collected in the United States, and eleven texts (all available) with six tunes were published in TBVa. The story changes little. Two brothers wrestle while coming home from school, and one is mortally wounded by the other's knife as a result of accident or jealousy, as in Child texts. Most Virginia texts indicate purposeful murder and are related to Child B; even when the wounding is accidental, the texts are verbally closer to Child B than to Child A.
Five versions have been collected since the publication of TBVa, one of them, EE, a later phonograph recording of version G in TBVa, there given without its tune. Of these five versions, only AA and DD retain the supernatural calling of the murdered brother from his grave by his sweetheart. In DD the idea is badly garbled, but the version is unusual in the names given the participants. The sweetheart is Fair Ellen, and the murderer Lord Thomas, seemingly taken over from "Lord. Thomas and Fair Annet," while the murdered. brother is named. Ben. In AA the blow is apparently struck from passion. In BB the murder weapon is a tomahawk, and the weapon is apparently used merely because the brother will not "play ball/Nor roll the marble stone." The bow and arrow which the dying youth wishes buried with him, coupled with the tomahawk, suggest Indian lore, but actually the bow and arrow request is English and is found in child B, leaving only the tomahawk as an American addition. In DD and EE the killing is intentional, but no clear motive is indicated. CC is the only version in which the wound seems to be accidental, but even here the dying brother seems to hint at jealousy as the motive by asking his brother to tell his sweetheart "it's for her sake I'm gone."
Interesting folklore beliefs are preserved in the ending of AA and perhaps DD: - young Susie's supernatural power to charm birds and fishes and young Johnny out of the grave, and the notion that the kissing of the deal is fatal. (See Wimberly, pp. 282-83.) In other texts (BB, cc) the ending is religious. EE is incomplete.
This ballad presents some of the finest" tunes of the collection, with a tune for every text, all except one tune minutely transcribed from phonograph records, and the one exception taken down from live performance by no less a hand than than of John Powell. Bronson (I, 384-402) prints forty tunes (with texts), plus a single variant as Appendix, and divides the forty into five groups, divided quite strictly according to the middle cadence. All forty-one variants are from American sources. Group A, of eight members, has a middle cadence on the tonic; Group B, with twelve variants, has a middle cadence on the supertonic; Group C, of ten entries, has a middle cadence on the dominant; Group D, seven members, has a middle cadence on the octave above; Group E, with three variants, contains anomalous cases; the single Appendix version is a too literary combination of "The Two Brothers', and "Edward" and is "disturbingly independent," both melodically and textually. Of the six tunes from TBVa, Bronson classifies E in Group A, H in Group B, A and I in Group C, and D and F in Group D: a very representative distribution, minus anomalies and questionable items. This Virginia record seems to corroborate Bronson's remark that "No marked regional distinctions are discernible" in his groupings. of the tunes below, AA falls into Bronson's Group C, EE into his Group A.
DD. "As Two Little Schoolboys Were Going to School." Collected by Fred F. Knobloch, John Powell, Hilton Rufty, and A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Mrs. Mary E. Hicks, of Charlottesville, Va. Albemarle County, May 17, 1931. Tune noted by John Powell. Mrs. Hicks learned the ballad from her father, who learned it from his sister, Miss Annie Wood, in England. Miss Wood came to Albemarle County "almost 80 years ago. She was 98 years old when she died" (Mrs. Hicks). The last stanza, which is scarcely intelligible and which seems to have little to do with the story, yet suggests the preservation of interesting folklore material. "One of the finest tunes in the collection" (E. C. Mead). The stanzaic divisions, especially in the opening stanzas, are a little uncertain. The words were not fitted to the tune at the time of collection. It is clear from Mr. Powell's confident notation that the words fitted the tune at the time. Perhaps some error was made in taking down the words or in catching the stanzaic pattern.
If so, the last named collector is to blame. (But he did his best!)
1. As two little schoolboys were going to school
They fell into a play.
The oldest drew a penknife out of his pocket
And pierced it into his brother's breast
Until the blood did flowre.
2. "I am too little, I am too young,
Oh, brother, let me alone."
He took his shirt off of his back
And split it from gore to gore
And laid it on his bleeding wounds
As it may bleed no more,
But it still bled the more.
3. "Oh, brother, when you go home,
Our father ask after me,
You may tell him I am to school,
Gone with my lessons to learn.
4. "Oh, brother, when you go home,
Our mother ask after me,
Tell her that I am to London,
Gone with the boys to play.
5. "Oh, brother, when you go home,
If Fair Ellen ask after me,
You may tell her that I am dead and buried
In the Paul[1] church of the tomb."
6. As Lord Thomas was riding by,
Was a-riding of an iron grey,
"Pray tell unto me, Lord Thomas," said she,
"Where is your brother Ben ?"
"He told me to tell you that he was dead and buried
In the Paul[1] church of the tombs."
7 "I ain't no living [man], woman,[2]
I have no nose in my face."
She harped the little fish out of the sea
And swept blood out of stones.
1. "Pall?" is written beneath "Paul" on the MS.
2. Clearly this is the revenant ending found in Child B. It makes more sense if lines 1 and 2 are lines 3 and 4. She harped (played the harp) and brings him forth from his grave and he is dead: "I ain't no living [man], woman" he says to her.