Georgy, Hold Up Your Hands- Ward (NC) 1936 Brown E
[My title. From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, II, 1952 and Volume IV, music. Listed as 30. The Maid Freed from the Gallows (Child 95).
Their notes follow. Richard Chase collected Jack Tales from R. M. (Monroe) Ward and his brother, Miles A. Ward of Beech Creek, North Carolina.
R. Matteson 2015]
For preceding records of this ballad and its relation to theories of communal origin, see BSM 66, adding to the references there given New Hampshire (NGMS 117-18), Kentucky (BTFLS in 95), Tennessee (SFLQ XI 129-30), North Carolina (FSRA 35-6), Florida (FSF 295-9), Arkansas (OFS I 146-8), Missouri (OFS I 143-4, 145), Ohio (BSO 62-4), Indiana (BSI 125-7), and Michigan (BSSM 146-8 — this last being the "golden ball" form, rare in this country). In only half of the North Carolina texts is it a woman that waits to be freed from the gallows ; in versions B C E K L it is a man, and in D the sex is indeterminate. D is the only one of our texts in which the song has been turned into a play.
E. [Georgy, Hold Up Your Hands] 'The Maid Freed from the Gallows.' As sung by Monroe Ward on Bushy Creek, Watauga county, in 1936. The series here is mother, father, sister, brother, sweetheart. It begins
Oh Georgy, hold up your hands for me.
For I see your mother coming
Just about a hundred miles,'
in which the pronouns are confused, or at least confusing. The sweet-heart's answer, at the end:
'I have brought you gold,
I have brought you fee.
And I have come to marry you
And take you away with me.'