House Carpenter- House (NC) 1916 Sharp I
[Single stanza with music from: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes With Lyrics & sheet Music. Collected by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, published 1917 (notes follow). Sharp's No. 29. is titled, The Daemon Lover. I've changed it to the more appropriate title- House Carpenter.
Sharp did not provide the complete text for Shelton's version and many of the versions he collected because he probably felt that the text was not significantly different than the other versions he had already written out.
R. Matteson 2013]
Notes: No. 29. The Daemon Lover.
Texts without tunes:—Child, No. 243.
Texts with tunes:—Journal of the Folk-Song Society, iii., 84. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix xv., tune 1. Songs of the West, 2nd ed., No. 76. American variants: —Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii., 207; xix., 295; xx., 257; xxvi., 360; xxv., 274 (with tune). Broadside by H. De Marsan, New York. Musical Quarterly, January, 1916, p. 18.
I. House Carpenter- Sung by Mrs. HESTER HOUSE at Hot Springs, N. C, Sept. 15, 1916
Heptatonic (mixolydian influence).
Well met, well met, my own true love,
Well met, well met, says he.
I've just returned from the salt water sea,
And it's all for the sake of thee.