Black Jack David- (NC) c.1915 Rawn/Brown A
[From Brown Collection of NC Folklore; Vol. 2, 1952. Their notes follow. Unfortunately most the Brown versions are not well documented (no informant named) and come mainly from from Rawn, T. Smith, and Sutton, some of BC's important collectors.
This version is from Rawn, a collector who is not well-known. Here is a partial bio I've written:
Rawn, Isabel (NC-GA) (later Mrs. W. T. Perry) collector; Brown Collection (Isabel Rawn of Cherokee County); Friend of the Campbell family, gave ballads to Olive Dame Campbell (while she was in school in Georgia), published without credit in Sharp EFSSA, 1917, 1932. Isabel Nauman Rawn was born in Fort Elliot, TX on Oct. 30, 1885 and died in Asheville, NC on Aug. 19, 1936. Her father was Maj. Charles C. Rawn and mother, Isabel Douglas Nawman. She married Thomas Lockwood Perry, son Thomas Lockwood Perry (Jr.) (1916-1991), daughter Priscilla Perry Forte, d. 2012.
"Miss Isabel Rawn, of the Mount Berry School, Mount Berry, Ga., writes that she has collected nine ballads in Georgia"
"Isabel Rawn, fresh from Wellesley, was full of enthusiasm over the idea of finding really old ballads still being sung."
R. Matteson 2015]
37. The Gypsy Laddie (Child 200)
Still widely known and sung; see BSM 73-4, and add to the citations there given Massachusetts (FSONE 207-9), Tennessee (SFLQ XI 130-1), North Carolina (FSRA 2)7, one stanza only), Florida (SFLQ viii 156), Arkansas (OFS I 152-3, 155-60), Missouri (OFS I 155-9), Ohio (BSO 67-9), Indiana (BSI 134), and Kittredge's bibliographical note JAFL xxx 323. Texts from the Southern states are likely to include, rather incongruously, stanzas from the wooing song 'Where are you Going, my Pretty Maid?' So in Tennessee (FSSH iii), Mississippi (FSM 118-19), and North Carolina (SCSM 218 and versions A B D E G below).
A. 'Black Jack David.' From the Isabel Rawn collection, sent to Dr. Brown for the North Carolina society in 1915. Some of her findings, and perhaps this, were made in Cherokee county, in the southwest corner of the state. The last line of each stanza is repeated.
I Black Jack David come a-running through the woods,
A-singing oh so merrily,
He made green hills ail around him ring
And charmed the heart of a lady,
And charmed the heart of a lady.
2 'Come go with me, my pretty little miss,
Come go with me, my honey;
I'll take you to the deep, deep sea.
And you never shall want for money.
3 'How old are you, my pretty little miss?
How old are you, my honey?'
She answered him with a tee-hee-ha,
'I'll be sixteen next Sunday.'
4 'Go saddle me up my old gray horse,
Go saddle me up my darby,
And I'll ride east, and I'll ride west.
Till I overtake my honey.'
5 He rode and rode till he came to the sea,
The sea so dark and lonely;
The tears came twinkling down his cheeks,
For here was a body's [1] honey.
6 'Oh say will you leave your house and home.
And say will you leave your money.
Oh say will you leave your husband and babe
And go with the Black Jack David?'
7 'Yes I will leave my house and home.
Yes I will leave my money,
Yes I will leave my husband and babe
And go with my Black Jack David.
8 'Last night I lay on a fine feather bed
Beside of my husband and baby.
But tonight I'll lay on the cold, cold ground
Beside of my Black Jack David.'
Footnote 1. So the manuscript. Does it mean "somebody's"? Or "nobody's"? In neither case; it altogether intelligible.