Little Boy Hugh- Small (VA) 1918 Sharp F
[My title. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, I, 1934 edition; collected by Cecil J. Sharp, edited Karpeles. Comprising two hundred and seventy-four Songs and Ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight Tunes; Including thirty-nine Tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Karpeles and Sharps notes follow.
Dol Small was revisited by Karpeles in 1950 (w/ Cowell) and they made a recording, LC/AAFS rec. No. 10,003 (A1). The text and melody are very similar. See Bronson, 10b.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes; No. 31. Sir Hugh.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 155. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 539. Baring-Gould's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, pp. 92 and 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 120 (see also further references). Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 293 ; xxix. 164; xxxix. 108.
Texts with tunes :—M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes, p. 46. English County Songs, p. 86. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 264. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 46. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, xvii, tune No. 7. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 582. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 68 (published also in English Folk-Songs, Selected Edition, i. 22, and One Hundred English Folk- Songs, p. 22). Newell's Games and Songs of American Children, p. 76. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 148. D. Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. 53-5. Musical Quarterly, January 1916, p. 15. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxxv. 344; xxxix, 213. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 400 and 587.
F. [Little Boy Hugh.] Sung by MR. DOL SMALL at Nellysford, Va., May 22, 1918. (No 4th or 6th)
1. O she tossed it high, she tossed it low,
She tossed it in yonders wall,
Saying: Come a long, my little boy Hugh,
And get your silken ball.
2 I can't come in, I daren't come in
To get my silken ball,
For if my master knew it all
He'd let my life's blood fall.
3 She took him by his lily-white hand,
She led him through the hall,
And in that silver basin clear
She let his life's blood fall.
4 She wound him up in a lily-white sheet,
Three or four times four,
And tossed him in her draw-well,
It were both deep and cold.
5 The day had passed and the evening come,
The scholars going home,
Every mother had a son,
Little Hugh's had none.
6 She broke a switch all off that birch,
And through the town she run,
Saying: I'm going to meet my little boy Hugh,
I'm sure for to whip him home.
7 She run till she came to the old Jew's gate,
The old Jews all do sleep.
She heard a voice in that draw-well,
It were both cold and deep.
8 Cheer up, dear mother, it's here I've lain,
It's here I've lain so long,
With a little penknife pierced through my heart,
The stream do run so strong.
9 Go take me out of this draw-well
And make me a coffin of birch;
O take me out of this draw-well
And bury me at yonders church.