Who Taps At My Bedroom Window? Anderson (MB) 1966 Fowke
[From: Edith Fowke, Canadian Folk Music Journal 3 (1975) pp.38-39 sung by a member of the Anderson Family of Winnipeg Manitoba in 1966. Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
SONGS OF A MANITOBA FAMILY
EDITH FOWKE
Up to the present practically no Anglo-Canadian folk songs have been reported from Manitoba. Margaret Arnett MacLeod does include a few English verses in her Songs of Old Manitoba, but with the exception of one, “O Prairie Land,” they are composed texts which had no run in tradition. The Métis songs, particularly those of Pierre Falcon, are the most important previously reported from this province.
This lack of English songs prompts me to publish a small collection which I made in one evening from one Manitoba family. In 1966 when I was in Winnipeg attending the annual conference of the Canadian Authors’ Association, a friend, Nancy Drake, arranged for me to meet a family she had discovered who knew some folk songs. In the evening o f June 24 we met at her home and there the mother, Mrs. Cecil Anderson, born Katharine Asham, then 46, and her two children, Mrs. Pat Anderson Paul, then 25, and Austin Anderson, 19, sang a dozen songs for me.
“Who Taps at My Bedroom Window?” is a version of “The Drowsy Sleeper” (M4), although it also resembles the North American “The Silver Dagger” (G21). It is quite similar to Sharp’s version C from North Carolina (I, p. 360). This ballad, like “The Lady Gay,” is common in the States (Laws, ABBB, p. 182), but rare in Canada.
The British songs appear to have come from Mrs. Anderson’s maternal grandfather, a Campbell, who came out to the Canadian prairies from Glasgow around 1860. The lumbering and country and western songs the children picked up from men in their neighborhood, around Reedy Creek, a small community some miles south of Winnipeg. Mrs. Anderson sang the British ballads unaccompanied; Pat and Austin sang the others to Austin’s guitar accompaniment.
WHO TAPS AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW?
[music]
“It is who taps at my bedroom window
Disturbing me from a long night’s rest?”
“It is I, it is I, your own true lover.
I come to trouble you once more.”
Mary arose from her soft down pillow
And went to see who there might be.
“ It is I, it is I, your own true lover.
I’m down beside a willow tree.
“ It is Mary dear, go and ask your mother
If you can be my wedded bride.”
“ It is no use to go and ask my mother
For she is sure to answer no.”
“And if she says no return and tell me,
I’ll come no more to trouble you.
Then Mary dear, go and ask your father
If you can be my wedded bride.”
“ It is of no use to go and ask my father
For he is on his bed of rest,
And by his side is a silver dagger
To pierce the heart that I love best.”
Willie picked up the silver dagger
And plunged it through his aching heart.
“ It is goodby, Mary, my own true lover,
I’ll come no more to trouble you.”
Mary picked up the bloody dagger
And plunged it through her aching heart.
“ It’s goodby, Mother, goodby, Father,
Willie and I have gone to rest.
“There is seven ships upon the ocean
And seven more upon dry land.
Willie in one and I in another,
And oh how happy we will be!”