Bold Soldier- McAtee (WV) 1917 Cox
[My title, taken from the text. From Folk-Songs of the South by John Harrington Cox 1925. This version was collceted by Richardson, who also wrote about the informant in her 1920 JAFL article. Notes from Cox, Richardson below.
R Matteson 2014]
Cox, introduction: Her [Mrs. Nancy McAtee] father was Morris McDonald, born in Ireland and brought to this country while still a baby. The family eventually made its way to Randolph County, West Virginia, where her father located on a farm. Her mother's name was Emsey Barnett. There were nine children in the family, of whom she was the seventh. She had evidently led a hard life, as was indicated by the lines in her face. While I was getting all the information I could, I felt that she was calculating whether she could not get something out of me. This judgment turned out to be correct, for when the subject of pictures was broached she asked, "You 're goin' to give me Christmas gift, ain't ye?" A prompt reply in the affirmative removed all barriers of reluctancy. She told me about her own family, six children, two dead, the others "married and living right here in the Row." She mentioned Lucy, Maude, and Mamie, and their husbands, Eli Murphy, Sylvester Ashcraft, and John Hoop. There had been twenty-six grandchildren, now only thirteen. One of them was called in and exhibited by the proud father as a prodigy seven years old that had never had any front teeth. She and her family had been "right here over fifty years" where her "old man" had worked on the streets until he was too old and feeble to get about. She jerked her head toward a mound of bedclothes on one of the beds, saying, "That 's him," who, during all the time I was there, made not the least movement nor manifested the slightest sign of life.
Richardson- 1920 JAFL: My other old minstrel, Mrs. McAtee, popularly known as "Old Nance," is the opposite in every way of Mrs. Fogg. She is tall, and thin and gaunt, and has led a hard life, — a life in which no one would suppose there had ever been or was now any song. But you never can tell, and her small deep-set blear eyes twinkle as merrily as pretty little Mrs. Fogg's over the humorous parts of her song. She, too, was discovered by accident. She had come up one day to have a letter written to "the govermint" to get him to "redimpt Bobby," her son who had been drafted. She said she had sent his reprieve to the "Gov'nor," but had "never heerd nuthin' frum it," so she had determined to appeal to the "govermint;" and if one wouldn't let him out, the other might, for she "heerd there is two of 'em." The letters and the answers, and the frequent letters to Bobby in camp, necessitated many trips, and much conversation in which reminiscences of the past, of childhood days, gave me the clew, and started questions.
When she knew that Mrs. Fogg had given me twenty-two "songballets," she determined to be even with her, and strained every bit of memory to recall long-forgotten songs. By counting fragments the twenty-four were at last made up.
"You got to be partic'Iar," she would whisper to her daughter, who usually came up with her, "she makes it come out printin'!"
If this were a biographical sketch, it could come out "printin"' indefinitely; but that is another story, and I have not seen her now since the day she came up to tell me that Bobby was about to be "trespassed" into another company.
Every now and then, as she repeated the words of her songs for me, she would stop, and ask anxiously, "It ain't no harm sayin' 'em, is it? It's jus' sport, ain't it?" She went on to explain: "My mother she wouldn't never sing 'em, she sung good pieces. Her an' Pappy was well religious old people, they belonged to meetin', an' wuz baptized in the river. Pappy had this here — what you call fam'ly prayers, yes ma'am, prayed 'fore he went to work in the mornin', and 'fore he went to bed at night. He was full-blooded Irish, named McDonald. They brung him over when he was six weeks old, an' settled down in Albemarle County, Virginia. No, ma'am! I never learned these ballets from them; I heerd the other kids a-singin' 'em, an' the people that lived round there. Some of 'em I heerd the soldiers singin' when the war wuz goin on down there, pore fellers! some of 'em'd a had to stand in the same place twict to cast a shadder; but they was plucky, a-singin' an' pickin' their banjos an' fiddles."
Mrs. McAtee's collection included "Lady Margaret and Sweet William," "Lord Leven," "Fair Ellender," "Little Johnnie Green," "William Taylor and His Own True Lovyer," "Billy Boy," "Davy Crockett," "A Pretty Fair Maid in a Garden," "I was brought up in Sheerfield," "Go saddle up my Milk-White Steed," "My Name it is Bill Staffato," "When I rode the Madison Square," "The Cruel Father," "McAtee's Confession," "The Raising of Lazareth," and two or three songs of the Civil War, — "The Victory won at Richmond," "The Yankees' Retreat," etc.
THE SOLDIER'S WOOING [Folksongs from the South heading]
The only version of this ballad found in West Virginia, though imperfect, retains the elements of the story. Barry, who prints a copy from New Jersey (Journal, xxni, 447), points out that the ballad is somehow derived from the seventeenth-century broadside "The Master-piece of Love Songs" (see Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 229; J. R. Smith's Catalogue, p. 75; Ashton, A Century of Ballads, p. 164), and he remarks upon the resemblance to "Erlinton" (Child, No. 8). There are recent English versions in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, I, 108, and Alfred Williams' Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames, p. 115. American texts are published by Campbell and Sharp, No. 41 (North Carolina and Tennessee); Pound, No. 27 (Louisiana); and Tolman and Eddy, Journal, xxxv, 414 (Ohio: one stanza with tune), where Kittredge notes that the song was printed ca. 1800 in The Echo; or, Columbian Songster, 2d ed. (Brookfield, Massachusetts), p. 150. The song has been found also in Virginia (Bulletin, No. 4, p. 5), North Carolina (Minish MS.), Missouri (Belden, No. 84), and Canada (Tolman, Journal, xxix, 188). Cf. N. I. White MS., n, 593 ("Yankee Soldier").
[Bold Soldier] No local title. Communicated by Mrs. Hilary G. Richardson, Clarksburg, Harrison County, 1917; obtained from Mrs. Nancy McAtee.
1 . . . .
. . . .
These two couples rode to church, and, returning back again,
There she met her cruel father and seven other men.
2 Said, "Daughter, daughter, O daughter," said he,
"You thought that you'd bring this great scandal on me;
But if it 's your intention to be a soldier's wife,
Down in these lonesome valleys I'll end your sweet life."
3 The soldier overheard him, dismounted well armed,
He swore he'd gain the day or die on the ground;
He drew his sword and pistols and caused them to rattle;
The lady held her breath, while the soldier fought the battle.
4 The first one he come to, he pierced him through amain;
The next one he come to, he done just the same.
"Let's run," said the rest, "for here we'll all be slain!
To fight a free, bold soldier, I find it all in vain."
5 Up stepped her father, saying, "Don't let my blood run cold,
And you shall have, my daughter, ten thousand pounds in gold."
"Fight on!" said the lady, "that portion is too small."
"Well, hold your hand, dear soldier, and you can have it all."
6 They mounted their horses and off they did ride,
A fine weddin' supper for them they did pervide;
He named them his sons and called them his heirs;
It wasn't out of free good will, but surely out of fear.
7 Come all of you ladies, wherever you may be,
And never slight a soldier in any degree;
For a soldier they are brave, and jolly, brisk and free,
They will fight for their rights and their sweet libertee.