Greenwood Siding- Walters (NL) 1820-1920 Greenleaf B
[From Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland- Greenleaf and Mansfield 1933, version B. The two refrains follow the stanza lines. Notes by Kittredge follow. The family date of 1820 is accepted.
R. Mateson 2014]
This is a widely diffused ballad, found in Nova Scotia (Mackenzie, NO.3) and in several of the United States. See Cox, No. Si Campbell and Sharp, No. 9; Davis, No. 9; Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, pp. 80-93; McGill, pp. 82-86; Fuson, pp. 59-60. Cf. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, VIII, 248 (tune); Keith, No. II. For a broadside text see Fawcett, Broadside Ballads (Osterley Park), pp. 150-53.
B. GREENWOOD SIDING
Recited by Mrs. Susan Walters, Rocky Harbour, 1920.
1 There was a lady lived in York,
All along in a loney,
She fell in love with her father's clerk
Down by the greenwood siding.
2 She fell in love till it could be seen;
She fell in love till it could not be hid.
3 She leaned her back against the wall,
And there she had two babies born.
4 She had nothing to clothe them in
But one old apron and that was thin.
5 She had a penknife long and sharp;
She pierced those tender babies' heart.
6 She went to the rivet to wash her knife;
She couldn't get the blood off to save her life.
She saw two babes playing with the ball.
8 "Babes, 0 babes, if you was mine,
I would dress you up in silk so fine."
9 "Mother, a mother, when we were thine,
You neither dressed us in coarse nor fine. "
10 "Babes, O babes, then can you tell
Where I must go to, heaven or hell?"
11 "Mother, O mother, we're sorry to tell
Your soul must be in depths of hell.
12 "There is a hell so large and deep,
The steps is there, just fitting your feet."
The Walterses thought this had been known in their family since 1820, and might have come to Newfoundland from Jersey.