Bailiff's Daughter- Case (MO)1880 Belden/Kittredge
[From Ballads and Songs; Belden 1940; Reprinted in part by Kittridge, 1917 JAF. Belden's notes follow.
Evaline Watkins (Eva Warner Case), whose family members were early settlers of Missouri, married John Case in 1893. She was school teacher and frequent contributor to the Missouri Folk-Lore Society around 1916.
R. Matteson 2015]
The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington
(Child 105)
This is a seventeenth century broadside ballad. Child gives only one version, from a collection of broadside prints, tho he had an American text. It is one of the few ballads on the returned disguised lover theme (this time with the sexes reversed.) which he admitted to his collection. It is still sung both in Great Britain and in America; probably more often than collectors' records
show, since it has held pretty closely to print and would therefore seem negligible to folklorists. Many of the reports listed below are of the tune only.
It has been reported since Child's time from Aberdeenshire (LL 82-4), Oxfordshire (FSUT 124-5), Surrey (JFSS I 209), Sussex (JFSS I 125), Dorset (JFSS VII 34), and Somerset (JFSS VII 34-5) ; and from Maine (BBM 225-7), Vermont (GGMS 74-6, CSV6-7), Virginia (TBV383-4, 585), Kentucky (SharpK I 219-21), Mississippi (FSM 115-6) and Indiana (JAFL XXX 332). Kittredge JAFL XXX 332 prints the tenth stanza of Mrs' case's version as an 'amusing variation', which it is; but it is by no means unique' the same or a similar stanza appearing in the Aberdeenshire and the two Kentucky texts.
'The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington' contributed by Mrs. Case as sung by her in her childhood in Harrison County.
There was a youth, and a well-beloved youth,
He was a squire's son,
Who fell in love with the bailiff's daughter
That lived in Islington.
But when his friends did understand,
His fond and foolish mind,
They sent him up to fair London
An apprentice for to bind.
And when he had been there seven long years
He longed his love for to see,
Saying, 'Many fond tears have I shed for her
Who little has thought of me.'
Now all the maids of Islington
Went forth for to sport and play;
All but the bailiff's daughter dear;
She secretly stole away.
Now she's put off her gown so gay,
Put on her sober attire;
And she's gone up to fair London
Her true-love to require.
And as she went along the road,
The weather being hot and dry,
There she saw her own true-love
At last come riding by.
She stepped right up unto his side,
Took him by the bridle-rein:
'A penny, kind sir, oh give to me
For to ease me of my pain.'
'I pray thee, sweetheart, tell to me
Where that thou wast born.'
'At Islington, kind sir,' said she,
'Where I have had many a scorn.'
'If you were born at Islington,
Pray tell me, dost thou know
The bailiff's daughter of Islington?'
'She's dead, sir, a long time ago.'
'If she be dead and I am a-living,
She's lying there so low--
Oh, take from me my coal-black steed,
My fiddle and my bow!'
'She is not dead, but she is a-living,
A-standing by your side;
She is not dead but she is a-living,
Ready for to be your bride.'
'Oh, farewell grief and welcome joy,
Ten thousand times o'er and o'er,
For now I have seen my own true-love
That I thought I should see no more!'