John the Hazelgreen- Florence Shiflett (VA) 1962 Foss
[Listed as Bronson 4. "John of Hazelgreen." I've changed the title since "of" was never sung. George Foss recorded this for the LOC in 1962- LC/AAFS; rec. No, 12,0006 (B26). This fragmented version starts off with one of the last verses and only has three verses.
Foss recorded three versions from the Shiflett's, a prominant ballad singing family from an area of Virginia which became the repository for a version of this ballad. About Florence he writes:
"Florence Shiflett was in her mid-eighties when I first met her and she had always lived in the hills above Bacon Hollow. Some folks prefer to talk and sing rarely, and then only if pressed. Florence Shiflett did not talk much, but for her, singing was as natural as breathing. Singing was a pleasant way to pass a visit with friends or even to make one's solitary hours go by more quickly. Whenever I was with her she was constantly singing. Some of her songs, “Who Killed Cock Robin,” “Peggy the Harmless Creature, ” “The Gypsy Laddie-O” and “Across the Blue Mountain” are among the most beautiful I've ever heard."
From this region the Virginia Folk-Lore Society, under the direction of C. Alphonso Smith (who died in 1924) and later John Stone and Kyle Davis Jr., collected eleven texts and three melodies (Sharp collected two in 1918, one in a MS; Scarborough- two; Davis again in More Ballads- one; Karpeles/Cowell one; Wilkinson- three; Foss- three). At the time their book, 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, collected an excellent version in 1961 from Robert Shiflett, who was Raz Shiflett's son (see also Davis H; collected from Raz). 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.
John the Hazelgreen- Sung by Florence Shiflett, Wyatt's Mountain, near Dyke Va. Va, July 13, 1962; collected by George Foss.
O on the road one summer day,
A road they run (that runs) to town.
O out stepped John the Hazelgreen
And led his lady down.
You('re) welcome home, my pretty little maid,
You('re) welcome home with me,
For you can have my oldest son
A husband for to be.
I don't want your oldest son,
He's neither lord or king.
For I never intend to be the bride of none
John over the Hazelgreen.