Greenwood Sidey- Gott (ME) 1927 Barry E
[My title. From British Ballads from Maine, version E; 1929.
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.
E. Without title. Taken down, September 6, 1927, from the singing of Mrs. Oliver K. Joyce of Gott Island, who said it was known to her husband, but was considered "too smutty to repeat."
1 There was a lady lived in York,
All alone and aloney,
She had two pretty babes by her father's clerk,
Down by the greenwood sidey.
2 She leaned herself against an oak,
All alone and aloney,
The first it bent and then it broke,
Down by the greenwood sidey.
3. She leaned herself against a thorn,
All alone and aloney,
There these two pretty babes was born,
'Twas down by the greenwood sidey.
4 She took her garter off her leg,
All alone and aloney,
She tied the babes both thumb and leg,
Down by the greenwood sidey.
5 She took her penknife, sharp and keen,
All alone and aloney,
She thrust these babes into the heart,
Down by the greenwood sidey.
6 One day when she was walking the hall,
All alone and aloney,
She saw two pretty babes a-tossing the ball,
And 'twas down by the greenwood sidey.
7 She says, "Pretty babes, if you was mine,
All alone and aloney,
I'd feed you on good cakes and wine,
Down by the greenwood sidey."
8 "Dearest mother, we was thine,
All alone and aloney,
Nor fed us on good cakes and wine,
Down by the greenwood sidey."