Gipsum Davy- Gibson (VA) 1918 Sharp I
[My title. Single stanza from: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, collected by Cecil J. Sharp also Olive Dame Campbell. Edited by Maud Karpeles, Volume I, published 1917, 1932. Notes from 1932 edition follow, then Sharp's diary entry.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes No. 33. The Gypsy Laddie.
Texts without tunes:—-Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 200. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 550. Gavin Greig's Folk-Song of the North-East, ii, art. 110. Irish and English broadsides. Garret's Merrie Book o' Garlands, vol. i. A. Williams's Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, p. 120. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 294; xxiv. 346; xxv. 171-5. Broadside by H. de Marsan, New York (a comic parody).
Texts with tunes:—-Songs of the West, 2nd ed., No. 50. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 9 (also published English Folk Songs, Selected Edition, i. 13, and One Hundred English Folk-Songs, p. 13). Gavin Greig's Last Leaves, No. 60. Scots Musical Museum, ii, No. 181. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, pp. 130 and 524. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii. 191 ; xxii. 80 (tune only) ; xxx. 323. British Ballads from Maine, p. 269. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 423 and 590. McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 15. Sandburg's American Songbag, p. 311.
Version A is published with pianoforte accompaniment in Folk Songs of English Origin, 2nd Series.
The first two lines of the second stanza of text A provide a good instance of the stereotyped idiom of the ballad. Owing to the almost invariable description of a 'steed' as 'milk-white' the term has come to lose its literal significance, and in the mind of the singer a 'milk-white steed' means merely a horse. Similarly the folk will sing without any sense of contradiction of a 'false true lover.'
I. [Gipsum Davy] Sung by Mrs LIZZIE GIBSON at Crozet, Va., April 26, 1918
Heptatonic. Mixolydian.
1. The good lord he came trav'ling home,
Enquiring for his lady,
And the house-woman that she did tell him,
She was gone with the gipsum Davy.
To my hoo dar dan, To my hoo dar dan,
To my hoo dar dan, To my dar dee O.
2 It's go and get it's my grey nag
And draw them saddles all around her.
I'll ride all night till the broad daylight,
Or overtake my lady.
3 As he was riding up the road,
The rain poured down so muddy,
The first thing he spied up the road,
O there he spied his lady.
4 Come go back with me, my pretty Miss,
Come go back with me, my honey.
I'll swear by the sword that hangs by my side
You never shall want for money.
5 I won't go back with you, my love,
I won't go back with you, my honey;
For I'd rather have a kiss from gipsum's lips
Than all your land and money.
6 Pull off, pull off your high-heel-ed shoes,
What's made of Spanish leather,
And hand you down your lily-white hand,
We'll bid farewell for ever.
7 She pull-ed off her high-heeled shoes,
Was made of Spanish leather,
She handed him down her lily-white hand,
And bid him farewell for ever.
8 Last night she lied on a soft feather bed
With the good lord by the side of her;
To-night she's a-lying on the damp, cold ground
With the gypsies all around her.