Down by the Greenwood Side- Carr (ME) pre1868 Barry A
[From British Ballads from Maine, version A. This version is considerably older than the 1868 date when Mrs. Susie Carr Young of Brewer learned it from her grandmother. It's impossible to accurately date but early 1800s is a reasonable guess, making it one of the earliest US versions.
Barry's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
(Barry and all's notes)
BRITISH BALLADS FROM MAINE- THE CRUEL MOTHER
(Child 20)
We have found four excellent texts and two good fragments of "The Cruel Mother" in Maine. Fragment C is undoubtedly from Scotland, and, judging from the refrain, the B-text probably came from there also. One of the other texts was learned from Irish girls, but it shows no great peculiarities. Indeed, Mrs. Morse's statement that, although she heard it sung in Ireland a good many times, it was always in English and never in Gaelic, implies that the Irish form was imported from England. In Nova Scotia, Professor Mackenzie found it under the name of "The Greenwood Siding," which is closely similar to the common name for the song in Maine. Perhaps attention should be called to the fact that the people of maritime Maine and of parts of Nova Scotia are largely of the same stock. Before the American Revolution, over-populated Cape Cod sent out many bodies of emigrants to the eastward; and songs from widely separated points along the eastern coast may have come from the same village, or even the same hearthstone, on Cape Cod a century and a half ago.
The Maine texts found are sufficiently similar not to need any extended comparison with each other. Most of the variations can be accounted for as omissions. It is possible to take the stanzas we have and by arranging them in order to make one long ballad of twenty-three verses, which would not only include all our Maine texts, but all Professor Cox found in the South and several of Professor Child's texts, which are largely fragmentary. Such an arrangement, although not assuming to be the original ballad, has a working value to a collector, who can fit his fragments into place by following the tabulation: it is
perhaps as justifiable a reconstruction as the creation of an extinct animal from a fossil bone.
A. "Down By the Greenwood Side." From a manuscript book compiled at least twenty-five years ago by Mrs. Susie Carr Young of Brewer to preserve the old songs sung by her grandmother, mother, and others of the family. Melody recorded by Mr. George Herzog.
Mrs. Young says she learned this song at least sixty years ago from her Grandmother Carr, the wife of Hugh Hill Carr of Bucksport, who was born Mary Soper of Orland, where the Sopers were very early settlers. It has without doubt been a long time traditional in that family, and Mrs. Young thinks the first emigrants of some branch in the ancestry brought it to this country with them.
Dorian Mode. [Music upcoming]
1 There was a lady lived in York,
ft was all alone and alo-ne;
She fell in love with her father's clerk,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
2. She leaned her back against an oak,
It was all alone and alo-ne.
First it bent and then it broke,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
3. She leaned her back against a thorn,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
And there those two pretty babes were born,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
4. She took her penknife out of her pocket,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
She pierced those pretty babes to the heart,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
5. She washed her penknife in the brook,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
The more she washed it the redder its look,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
6. She wiped her penknife on the clay,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
And there she wiped the stains away
Down by the greenwood si-de.
7. She dug a grave both long and deep,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
She lay-ed those pretty babes in for to sleep,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
8. When she returned to her father's farm,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
She spied those pretty babes arm in arm,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
9. When she returned to her father,s hall,
It was all alone and alo-ne;
She spied those pretty babes playing ball,
Down by the greenwood si-de.
10 "Pretty babes I pretty babes, if thou art mine,"
It was all alone and alo-ne;
"I'll dress You up in satin so fine,"
All down by the greenwood si-de.