Hangman- Harvey (MS) pre1936 Hudson C
["The Girl Freed from the Gallows" is not a local title but was assigned probably by Roberts. I've changed it to a title that fits the ballad. From Arthur Palmer Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi 1936. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS
(Child, No. 95)
Six texts of this ballad have been recovered for the present collection. Two and a note on a third were published in my "Ballads and Songs from Mississippi," Journal, XXXIX, 105 ff. For a general discussion of the ballad in Mississippi, see p. 55. For other American variants, see Brown, p. 91 Campbell and Sharp, No. 24; Cox, No. 18; Davis, No. 27 (who notes that in Virginia the ballad has been used as a game and has also been dramatized); Pound, No. 13; Reed Smith, No. 10; Scarborough, p. 35; Wyman and Brockway, p. 44; Barry, No. 21.
C. [Hangman] "The Girl Freed from the Gallows." Copy sent me by Miss Annie Laurie Roberts, as written down from memory by a pupil, Jesse Harvey, in the Pearl River County Agricultural High School, who sang it.
1. "Hangman, hangman, slack up your rope,
And wait a little while,
For I see my father a-coming,
He has come a many long mile.
2 "Father, O father, did you bring your gold?
Did you come to buy me free?
Or did you come to see me hung
Along the sorrow tree?"
[Repeated for "mother," "brother," "sister," and, finally, "lover."]
15 "Lover, O lover, I brought my gold,
I come to buy you free,
But I did not come to see You hung
Along the sorrow tree."