Holland Shirt- Delorme (NY) c.1873 Flanders K 1944
[My title (no title given) from Flanders, Ancient Ballads; 1966; notes by Coffin follow. The informant, “Grandma” Lily Delorme, of Hardscrabble on the Saranac, NY, learned songs from parents and her grandfather, Gideon Baker, who fought in the War of 1812.
Delorme was one of the best informants of Flanders and Olney (also Porter who recorded 100 of her songs). Most of her ballads date back into the 1800s since she was born in 1869 and learned them from her family. Mrs. Lily Delorme's offficial residence was Cadyville, New York. She was born in Schuyler Falls, New York, in 1859. Her father was born in Starksboro, Vermont; her mother, in Schuyler Falls, New York. This ballad was learned in her home as a child.
R. Matteson 2014]
The Elfin Knight [Notes by Coffin]
(Child 2)
On page 227 of Ben Botkin's Folksay 1930, L. W. Chappell points out that "Riddles, perhaps even more than most types of traditional lore, have a way of 'staying put.' " It is not surprising then to find "The Elfin Knight," widespread, but relatively unvarying, in both Britain and America. The major collections in the two countries usually include it, and it has been the object of a good bit of study. Its popularity is undoubtedly due to its presence in broadside tradition; Child B is a black-letter text from Restoration times, and the ballad appears in American songsters and on American broadsheets just before the Mexican war, Phillips Barry, with the help of George Lyman Kittredge, has reviewed the printed tradition of the song in JAF, XXX, 284, and a bibliography of song-sheet texts is given there. For a start on further references, see Coffin, 30-31 (American); Dean-Smith, 65, and Belden, (English); and Greig and Keith, 1-2 (Scottish).
The relationship of this song and others like it to British courtship customs and vestigial fertility rites has never been thoroughly discussed. However, there is enough evidence to warrant research along these lines. As most scholars have recognized, the elfin lover of the British texts and child's title is nor native to the ballad and the riddler is a mortal lad. The situation is that of courtship, not unlike the one in the widespread Aarne-Thompson, Mt. 875. The most common refrain, as in Versions A-B and D-G, a corruption of "rosemary and thyme," preserves the plant symbolism of fidelity and fertility. It is these herbs that the girl such as Madeline in Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes" put on either side of her bed to dream of her lover. Also, the riddle, as Charles Francis potter indicates on page 940 of The standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and, Legend, may be solved as a sort of sympathetic magic to insure the success of critical ventures like those into love and marriage. certainly the relation of riddling to puberty and fertility rites is to be found everywhere.
The song is in Phillips Barry's British Ballads from Maine, 3.
The eight tunes included here fail into three main groups: 1) the versions sung by Underhill, Luce, Delorme, and possibly Perkins; 2) the versions of Gray and Daniels; and 3) those of Morton and Richards, whose relationship, if any, is quite distant. There is also a possibility that the Perkins version is related to that of Richards rather than group 1. Group 1 corresponds to BCI, group B, and so does group 2, although the two groups represent distant relatives in BCI. Strangely enough, our group 3 also corresponds to some tunes in the large group B in the BC classification, whose integrity is upheld only by a large number of intermediate versions, and which consists of rather diverse materials. our groups 1 and 2 seem to have variants which are widespread in the United States, in conjunction with Child 2 texts. The Perkins, Morton, and Richards tunes have fewer analogues and are not so typically representative of the Anglo-American ballad style as the other tunes in this collection of Child 2.
E. [Holland Shirt.] As remembered, by Mrs. Lily Delorme of Caddyville, New York, Mrs. Delorme says, 'This is a jolly little song I used to hear my father and mother sing. It was like this: I don't recall the name of it." Mrs. Delorme's father was born in Starksboro, Vermont, and' her mother in Schuyler's Falls, New York. M. Olney, Collector.
Structure: A B1 A Cb D (2,2,2,2,2), Rhythm D undulating; Scale: hexatonic- t.c. E-flat. Note the 5/4 measure before the end. For mel. rel. see, Sharp 1 .pt, I; an Indiana version, L.c. record 1736 A; FCB4, 3(A), especially the beginning; and MF, 23b, measures 3 and 4, and, the corresponding ones in our tune.
"Tell her to make me a Holland shirt,"
Slum-a-lum-a nay-cree, slo-mun-nil,
"Sew it without a stitch of needlework"'
Lumi-tu, lumi-tie, lumi-tie-O-tum,
Slum-a-Ium-a nay-cree, slo-mun-nu.
"Tell her to wash it in yonder well,
Where a drop of water never fell."
"Go tell him to plough me an acre of land
And plough it beneath the sea and sand.
"Tell him to plough it with a deer's horn
And sow it all over with peppercorns.
"Tell this fool when he gets his work done
To come to me and I'll have his shirt done."