John of Hazelgreen- Robert Shiflett (VA) 1961 Foss
[From Anglo-American Folksong Style- collected by George Foss; 1961. Robert Shiflett's version is perhaps the best version of the dozen or so version recorded in the Brown's Cove, Virginia region. Raz Shiflett's version (his father), collected 40 years earlier, is found as Davis H and is only four verses long. Robert's version has the last verse which is taken from "The Blackest Crow" song family (see Davis most versions).
This area (although it was found in other nearby locations) of Virginia became the repository for a version of this ballad. At the time Traditional Ballads was being completed (c.1928) there were no other versions of John of Hazelgreen collected in the US (that would change as Barry published a version from Maine in 1929).
George Foss, who wrote an excellent article titled, From White Hall to Bacon Hollow. Here are some excerpts:
From White Hall to Bacon Hollow is about a place and about its culture and people. I have granted myself the author's indulgence of selecting a title significant in its double meaning. White Hall to Bacon Hollow is a stretch of twisting country road, Virginia route 810, crossing the line between Albemarle and Greene Counties.
The earliest settlers of importance to the area were members of the Brown family. The patriarch of the Virginia Browns was Benjamin Brown, who began acquiring land in Albemarle County in 1747. He amassed six thousand acres of what was to become known as Brown's Cove. Included in these holdings was a tract patented to him by King George III in 1750.
It is of importance at this point to mention Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., who was a collector of ballads and folksongs specifically of Virginia. He was not a collector in the same sense as Sharp, that is a field worker and face-to-face gatherer of songs. He was more in the mold of Francis James Child, the great collector-editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, that is, he served to gather and organize, to sift and evaluate the field work of numerous amateur, hobbyist and professional collectors. As early as 1929 he produced Traditional Ballads of Virginia; in 1949 he published Folksongs of Virginia and More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, all three under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society. A courtly gentleman “of the old school,” he was professor of English literature at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a great span of time. It was professor Davis who was Paul Clayton Worthington's teacher at the University during the 1950's and inspired Paul's interest in balladry and folksong.
Two later collectors who visited and worked in the White Hall-Bacon Hollow area were Richard Chase and professor Winston Wilkinson whose manuscripts are now kept by the University of Virginia. They were the first collectors to record the songs of some of the finest singers in the region, Ella Shiflett and Victoria Shiflett Morris as early as 1935.
Some of the family names still found in northwest Albemarle County and Greene County date from pre-Revolutionary times: Brown, Frazier and Jones. Other names commonly found are Walton, Powell, Sandridge and Wood. But by far the most commonly found are Morris and Shiflett. This makes the tracing of relationships very difficult since various branches of the family are only very distantly related but share the same name. Robert Shiflett (designated “Raz's Robert,” i.e. Erasmus' son Robert, to distinguish him from the region's numerous other Robert Shifletts) speculates that the family was originally descended from French mercenaries brought over by Lafayette to aid the colonies in their War of Independence.
I was told about Robert Shiflett by Paul Clayton Worthington and Roger Abrahams who were frustrated in being unable to get him to sing for them, although he discussed and even recited some fine old ballads including one that Worthington described as a ”very unusual version of 'The Gypsy Lady' with all sorts of internal rhyming.” I confidently boasted that I would visit with Mr. Shiflett and succeed where they had failed. Throughout my first several visits we talked and talked and talked, but all requests for the singing of ballads received the same reply, “Just can't sing anymore, can't get my breath, my lungs are too weak. But I used to sing a great deal.”
During these long but frustrating talks I learned of Mr. Shiflett's other interests and of his background. I remembered an unusual coin my father had given me, a Confederate Commemorative Half Dollar, and asked Mr. Robert if he had one such. When he said he did not, an idea dawned on me and upon my next visit to the area the fifty cent piece was in my pocket. I went to Mr. Shiflett's neat white frame house and was invited in as usual for coffee and small talk. I fished out the coin and handed it over with the comment that since I was not really a coin collector and he was, I wanted him to have it since he appreciated its worth more than I did. He took it and seemed really touched as he put it with his other pieces. But more important I had touched some spring of rapport between two people who value things that most other people only use or ignore. Robert Shiflett without any further persuasion commenced to perform some twenty five songs, ballads, fiddle and banjo tunes. His lungs held up fine.
Compare to Davis, Versions A-I.
R. Matteson 2014]
John of Hazelgreen- Sung by Robert Shiflett; 1961; collected by Foss.
1. An old knight rode one summer's day,
Down by the greenwood side;
And there he spied a fair young maid,
And all alone she cried.
2. As he drew nearer unto her,
To learn what it could mean,
All her lamentation was
For John of Hazelgreen.
3. "You're welcome home, my fair young one,
You're welcome home with me,
And you may wed my oldest son,
A bold young man is he."
4. "I would not wed your oldest son,
If he were lord or king,
For I never intend to be the bride of none,
Save John of Hazelgreen."
5. "Oh, he is tall, his shoulders broad,
He's the fairest of the king,
His hair hangs down in links of gold,
My John of Hazelgreen."
6. He took her up before him then,
And they rode near the town.
Before John Hazelgreen sprang out,
To lift his lady down.
7. Three times he kissed her ruby lips,
Three times he kissed her chin,
He kissed her fair white hand,
To lead his lady in.
8. The tears were dry, the sorrow gone,
But her surprise was seen,
the old knight's oldest son
Was John of Hazelgreen.
9. "If I should ever thee forsake,
May heaven forsake me,
And cast me into the brimstone lake,
Forever and eternity.