Hangman's Tree- Scarborough 1925
[This excerpt from On The Trail Of Negro Folk-Songs by Dorothy Scarborough in 1925 sheds some light on the African-American versions of Child 95, The Maid Freed from the Gallows. See M. A. Owen's African-American tale, De Tale Ob De Gol'en Ball (1893) in my attached pages to Recordings & and Info (above this attached page).
R. Matteson 2012]
Excerpt from: On The Trail Of Negro Folk-Songs; Dorothy Scarborough 1925
II. The Negro's Part In Transmitting Traditional Songs and Ballads
ONE of the most fascinating discoveries to be made in a study of southern folk-lore is that Negroes have preserved orally, and for generations, independent of the whites, some of the familiar English and Scotch songs and ballads, and have their own distinct versions of them. I was vastly interested in this fact when I chanced upon it in research I was making in ballad material some years ago in Texas and Virginia. Unaware that other cases existed, I thought at first that what I found were only exceptions, accidents of folksong, though I began to look for similar instances. I found enough to start a nucleus for a discussion of this aspect of folk-song, and so was especially interested in an article by C. Alphonso Smith, professor of English at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, commenting on his discovery of the same fact ("Ballads Surviving in the United States," in the Musical Quarterly, January, 1916). Professor Smith wrote, in answer to my appeal for suggestions for this book of mine: "It seems to me that you should devote at least a section of your work to the agency of the Negro in helping to preserve and to perpetuate and to popularize old-world lyrics — English and Scottish folk-songs that drifted across with our forbears and are not the products of Negro genius." I was delighted to find corroboration of my conclusions in such a quarter, and am indebted to Professor Smith for much information of value concerning this point.
To discuss this subject adequately would require research work and writing more extensive than I have time for now, and so I can hope only to give a suggestion as to the material, and leave it to some investigator who can spend much time in the field, to work it out in detail.
To understand this phenomenon we have to recall the history of our colonization, and remember that the South was settled largely by Cavaliers and Scotch people, both of whom loved song. Folk-songs took up no room in the ships that crossed the ocean to this adventurous land, but they were among the most precious of the cargo that came over, and they have survived through the years, through the poverty, the hardships, and all the struggles of pioneer life, better than the material goods that accompanied them. While the hearts that cherished them, the lips that sang them, are indistinguishable dust, these songs live on. Students of balladry know that America is still rich in the traditional songs of the old country, that in remote mountain sections of the South to-day there is perhaps a rarer heritage of English and Scotch folk-songs actually being sung from oral tradition than in any part of Great Britain. The old songs and ballads have been lovingly remembered, transmitted orally from generation to generation, with variations such as inevitably come in a change of surroundings and social conditions. The old songs are alive among us, and the American versions are distinctive, as true to the traditions as those handed down on the other side of the water, though differing from them in details.
In the early days on the plantations in the South, when books and newspapers were less plentiful than now, songs formed a larger part of the social life than they do at present. At the "great house" the loved old ballads would be sung over and over, till the house servants, being quick of memory and of apt musical ear, would learn them, then pass them on in turn to their brethren of the fields. This process would be altogether oral, since the slaves were not taught to read or write, save in exceptional cases, and their communication with each other and with the outside world would of necessity be by the spoken word.
By cabin firesides, as before the great hearths in big houses, the old songs would be learned by the little folk as part of their natural heritage, to be handed down to their children and their children's children. Such a survival among the Negroes was remarkable, far more so than song-preservation among the whites, who in many instances kept old ballads by writing them down in notebooks, and learning them from old broadsides or keepsake volumes; while the Negroes had none of these aids, but had to sing each song as they learned it from hearing others sing it, and must remember it of themselves. And yet they cherished the old songs and had their own versions of them.
My first find of folk-material of this sort made a great impression on my mind. Some years ago I was sitting on the porch of my sister's home in Virginia, talking with a young colored maid who loafed on the steps. It was a warm summer afternoon when neither of us felt inclined to exertion, and Lucy was entertaining me withsongs and stories of her race. She told of a certain mountain section in North Carolina, where lived some people whom she described mysteriously: " Dey ain't niggers an' dey ain't whites. And yet you can't scarcely say dat dey's mulattoes. Dey is called by a curi's name — Ishies. Dey lives off to demselves an' sho is funny folks."
I learned later that the term used to designate them was "Free Issue," since they were the offspring of Negroes who were not slaves, and so these mulattoes, or their ancestors, had been born free.
The girl sat idly swinging her foot, and gazing across the lake, when suddenly she said, "I'll sing you a song about the Hangman's Tree." She then gave a lively rendering of a ballad I had never heard sung before, making vivid gestures to dramatize her words. I asked Lucy to write it down for me, and here is her version, just as she copied it, with her own " stage directions ":
(Spies Father at a distance, and sings)
Hangman, hangman, hangman,
Loosen your rope. I think I spy my father coming.
He has come many a long mile, I know.
(To Father) Father, have you come?
And have you come at last?
And have you brought my gold?
And will you pay my fee?
Or is it your intention to see me hung
Here all under this willow tree?
(Father to Son) Yes, I've come, I've come.
I have not brought your gold,
I will not pay your fee.
'T is my intention to see you hung
Here all under this willow tree.
(Spies Mother) Hangman, hangman, hangman,
Loosen your rope.
I think I spy my mother coming.
She has come many a long mile, I know.
(To Mother) Mother, have you come?
And have you come at last?
And have you brought my gold?
And will you pay my fee?
Or is it your intention to see me hung
Here all under this willow tree?
(Mother to Son)
Yes, I've come, I've come.
I have not brought your gold.
I will not pay your fee.
'T is my intention to see you hung
Here all under this willow tree.
(Spies Brother)
Hangman, hangman, hangman,
Loosen your rope.
I think I spy my brother coming.
He has come many a long weary mile, I know.
(To Brother)
Brother, have you come?
And have you come at last?
And have you brought my gold?
And will you pay my fee?
Or is it your intention to see me hung
Here all under this willow tree?
(Brother to Brother)
Yes, I 've come, I ?ve come.
I have not brought your gold.
I will not pay your fee.
'T is my intention to see you hung
Here all under this willow tree.
(Spies Sister) Hangman, hangman, hangman,
Loosen your rope.
I think I spy my sister coming.
She has come many a long weary mile, I know.
(To Sister)
Sister, have you come?
And have you come at last?
And have you brought my gold?
And will you pay my fee?
Or is it your intention to see me hung
Here all under this willow tree?
(Sister to Brother) Yes, I 've come, I 've come.
I have not brought your gold.
I will not pay your fee.
'T is my intention to see you hung
Here all under this willow tree.
(Spies Lover) Lover, have you come?
And have you come at last?
And have you brought my gold?
And will you pay my fee?
Or is it your intention to see me hung
Here all under this willow tree?
(To the Loved One, his Answer) Yes, I 've come, I 've come.
I Ve brought your gold,
I'll pay your fee.
'T is not my intention to see you hung
Here all under this willow tree.
(Locked arms and walked happily away)
I asked Lucy where she learned that, and she said, "Oh, the col-ed folks sing it. We've known it always." When I inquired if she got it from a book or from hearing some lite person sing it, she answered:" No, us colored folks jes' know it. 's jes' been sorter handed down amongst us. I don't know when I irned it."
She told me that Negro children sometimes made a little play of it and acted it out in parts. I was interested in her dramatic and vivid esentation of it, and in the fact that it was obviously not a natural part of the Negro repertoire; but the significance of the general lowledge of it among the Negroes did not impress me so much then later. She could not give me any explanation for the girl's sentence the gallows. "It jes' happened so." Nor did she know any plausable reason why her relatives should spurn her, and her True Love, Love faithful when her own mother rejected her. All she knew was iat it was an old song that they had always sung. Students of folk-song will readily recognize this as the old English ballad, The Maid Freed from the Gallows, the American version of hich has the title, The Hangman's Tree. The English version, No. 95 in Child's Collection, is from the "Percy Papers," given by ie Reverend P. Parsons, of Wye, in 1770, from oral tradition. The Scotch version has a stronger ending, for in it the maiden roundly accuses her delinquent relatives and invokes spirited curses upon them. Child says that there are many versions of this familiar ballad theme, from both northern and southern Europe. One tradition is that of a young woman captured by the corsairs, who demand heavy ransom, which her own family refuse to pay but which her lover gladly gives. Another tradition holds that the story is all allegory, the golden ball signifying a maiden's honor, which when lost can be restored to her only by her lover. That would explain the sentence of death; for, in old times, death by burning or hanging was the penalty for unchastity on the part of a maid or wife.
Miss M. A. Owen gives a different and more dialectic Negro version in "Old Rabbit, the Voodoo," the story of a Negro child to whom a golden ball is given at her birth by a "conjur man." He warns that she must never break the string which binds the ball about her neck. But she does break it, and the ball by its magic turns her into a beautiful white girl. The child's mother dies and a step-mother steals the ball, whereupon the girl is changed back into a Negro. As if that were not enough, she is accused of having murdered the white girl, who is now, of course, missing. She is sentenced to death, and appeals to her father.
Oh, daddy, find dat golden ball,
Ur yo' see me hung 'pun de gallus-tree.
But father does not aid, for "he go by," and all her relatives in turn fail her. In this case even her "beau" turns his back upon her, and she is about to be hanged. At the last moment the magician appears, disguised as a "beggar-man," and restores the golden ball to the girl, whereupon her fairness and beauty return. The beggar himself changes on the spot to a handsome young man, who vanishes with the girl into the side of a hill.
Professor Smith writes later: "It was a matter of profound interest to me to learn that The Hangman's Tree, or The Maid Freed from the Gallows, had been dramatized by the Negroes and was being played in many remote sections of Virginia. So far as I know, this was the first instance on record of the popular dramatization of a ballad in this country.
"Nothing has interested me more in the quest of the ballad than to find that for, doubtless, hundreds of years the Negroes have been singing and acting this haunting old ballad and nobody knew anything about it. In addition to the evidence adduced in my article, I have a letter from Mrs. Robert R. Moton, wife of the former president of Hampton, now Tuskegee, dated December 2, 1915, saying:
'When I was a child in Gloucester County, they used it as a game.' I have also a Negro version from Nelson County and an interesting account of its use there as a game among Negroes."
Another version, differing in the important respect that the sex of the condemned one has been changed, was given me by Mr. Edwin Swain, a baritone singer, now of New York City, but formerly of Florida. This is interesting as an example of the way in which changes may come. Mr. Swain says that in his childhood in Florida he saw the Negroes act out this song at an entertainment in the Negro schoolhouse. He gave a vivid account of the dramatization. The condemned — here a man instead of a woman (a curious change to take place in the case of a ballad whose title is The Maid Freed from the Gallows) — was all ready for hanging, with a real rope fastened round his neck. The hangman held the other end of the rope in his hand, ready to jerk the victim to his fate. The victim, a large black man, appealed for mercy, begged for a few minutes' reprieve, on the ground that he saw his father coming; but the father sternly repudiated him in gesture and song. His mother was equally obdurate, and likewise the brother and sister. The stage was fairly crowded with cold-hearted relatives — for Negroes in their singing love to reach out to all remote branches of relationship. At last the man begged for one more minute, for he saw his "True Love" coming. True Love came in, a yellow woman dressed in white, with a box of money, and dramatically won his release.
Mr. Swain's version goes as follows:
HANGMAN, SLACK ON THE LINE
"Hangman, hangman, slack on the line,
Slack on the line a little while.
I think I see my father coming
With money to pay my fine.
"Oh, father, father, did you bring me money,
Money to pay my fine?
Or did you come here to see me die
On this hangman's line? "
" No, I didn't bring you any money,
Money to pay your fine,
But I just came here to see you die
Upon this hangman's line."
"Hangman, hangman, slack on the line,
Slack on the line a little while.
I think I see my mother coming
With money to pay my fine.
"Oh, mother, mother, did you bring me any money,
Money to pay my fine?
Or did you just come here to see me die
Upon this hangman's line? "
"No, I didn't bring you any money,
Money to pay your fine,
But I just came here to see you die
Upon this hangman's line."
"Hangman, hangman, slack on the line,
Slack on the line a little while;
For I think I see my brother coming
With money to pay my fine.
"Oh, brother, brother, did you bring me any money,
Money to pay ray fine?
Or did you just come here to see me die
Upon this hangman's line?"
"No, I didn't bring you any money,
Money to pay your fine,
But I just came here to see you die
Upon this hangman's line."
''Hangman, hangman, slack on the line,
Slack on the line a little while;
For I think I see my sister coming
With money to pay my fine.
"Oh, sister, sister, did you bring me any money,
Money to pay my fine?
Or did you just come here to see me die
Upon this hangman's line?"
"No, I didn't bring you any money,
Money to pay your fine,
But I just came here to see you die
Upon this hangman's line."
"Hangman, hangman, slack on the line,
Slack on the line a little while.
I think I see my true love coming
With money to pay my fine.
"Oh, True Love, True Love, did you bring me any money,
Money to pay my fine?
Or did you just come here to see me die
Upon this hangman's line? "
"True Love, I got gold and silver,
Money to pay your fine.
How could I bear to see you die
Upon this hangman's line?"
I found another version which differs somewhat in minor details from Mr. Swain's, but like his has the central character a man instead of a woman. This was given to me by Mrs. Esther Finlay Hoevey, of New Orleans, through the courtesy of Miss Richardson, of Sophy Newcomb College. This was remembered from the singing of an old Negro woman, who had in her youth been put up on the slave block in Mobile and sold down the river. In this, as in Mr. Swain's version, the condemned is a man and True Love a woman.
"Hangman, hangman, slack the rope,
Slack the rope a while;
For I think I see my father coming,
Coming for many a mile.
"Oh, my father, have you paid my fine,
Brought your gold along?
Or have you come here to-night for to see me hung,
Hung on the gallows tree?"
"No, my son, I have not paid your fine,
I've brought no gold along,
But I 've just come to see you hung,
Hung on the gallows tree."
Hangman, hangman, slack the rope,
Slack the rope a while;
For I think I see my mother coming,
Coming for many a mile.
"Oh, my mother, have you paid my fine,
Brought your gold along?
Or have you come here to-night for to see me hung,
Hung on the gallows tree? "
The mother refuses also, and after that the sister and brother. Then the hangman is implored to slack the rope, for True Love is coming.
" True Love, True Love, have you paid my fine,
Brought your gold along?
Or have you come here to-night for to see me hung,
Hung on the gallows tree?"
"True Love, True Love, I have paid your fine,
I've brought my gold along,
I've come here to-night for to set you free,
Free from the gallows tree."
This old ballad, which survives in England also under the title The Prickly Bush, or The Briaty Bush (from which Floyd Dell takes the title for his novel), with a chorus not found in the American variants, has, as Professor Smith says in his article referred to above, become peculiarly the property of Negroes, at least in Virginia. He gives a variant received from a Negro girl in Gloucester County, who "learned it from her grandmother," in which the treasure is a golden comb instead of a ball.
"Oh, hangman, hold your holts, I pray,
O hold your holts a while;
I think I see my grandmother
A-coming down the road.
"Oh, have you found my golden comb,
And have you come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me hanged
On the cruel hangman tree?"
Another variant, which he gives as coming from Franklin County, shows, as in the case of Mr. Swain's version from Florida and that from Louisiana, the victim as a man.
"Oh hangerman, hangerman, slack on your rope
And wait a little while;
I think I see my father coming
And he's travelled for many a long mile."
Maximilian Foster has told me of a different version, which he heard companies of Negro soldiers in France singing, but which he has not been able to round up for me. All these versions, different in each state, and each showing difference from the others, are true to the oral tradition which keeps the story and the spirit of a ballad but changes the wording. The Negroes would be particularly attracted to this ballad because of its simple structure and its dramatic story. It is easy to remember, for its repetitions proceed regularly.