Little Turtle Dove- Clement (VA) 1931 Davis DD
[My title. From Davis; More Traditional Ballads From Virginia, 1960. His notes follow.
Davis, who claims to have found thirteen more versions since TBVa, 1929, for some reason selects this one stanza fragment and rejects nine others. That makes no sense to me since there's no way to know if this is even a version of George Collins (see also Gardner's Michigan version). I'd like to see all thirteen versions!!!
R. Matteson 2015]
26. LADY ALICE (Child, No. 85 )
Child, though he finally prints five versions of "Lady Alice"- only two as his main entry and three in Additions and Corrections- gives summary treatment to this ballad in one of his shortest headnotes (only six lines). This is in marked contrast to his elaborate discussion (sixteen double-column pages) of the very closely related ballad of "Clerk Colvill" Child, No. 42). The explanation of the discrepancy is that child was apparently unaware of the "Johnny Collins" version of "Lady Alice," -the version which supplies the connecting link with "Clerk Colvill." Since he knew only the "Giles Collins" or "Lady Alice," versions, he is to be forgiven for ignoring the "Clerk Colvill" relationship and finding "Lady Alice" a sort of counterpart of "Lord Lovel," which, in its shortened and simplified form of "George Collins" and the like, it is.
Some eight years after the publication of Child's last volume, George B. Gardner, of Melrose, collected in Hampshire three partial texts and tunes of a song called "George Collins, containing some introductory stanzas introducing a second lady-love of a mermaid or supernatural character, to whom Collins is apparently unfaithful and who in requital causes his otherwise unexplained death, so deeply mourned by his earthly lady who in turn dies of her love and sorrow. Mr. Gardner published these (and other) Hampshire songs in JFSS, III (1908-9), 299-302. The three not quite complete texts seem to constitute the first appearance of what is now recognized as the "John Collins" or "Johnny Collins" version of the ballad, the version that links "Lady Alice," so closely with "Clerk Colvill" that at least two scholarly commentators have concluded that the "Johnny Collins" version of the ballad represents an older form of "Lady Alice" (Child, No. 85) and that all versions of this ballad may quite possibly be versions or variants of "Clerk Colvill" ( Child, No. 42).
Miss Barbara M. Craster, writing in the next volume of JFSS, LV (1910-13), 106-9, identifies the three main incidents of Mr. Gardner's texts as: (1) his [Collins'] meeting with a maiden by a stream, the maiden being evidently of a supernatural nature; (2) his return home and death as the result of the meeting; and (3) his true-love's realization of the tragedy through the sight of his coffin, and her own consequent death. Miss C'raster points out that all stock versions of the ballad omit incident (1) entirely, thus giving no reason for the man's death, while some are still further reduced, and contain only incident (3). She goes on to ask the question about Mr. Gardner's text, "Is this not more probably a survival of the original ballad from which both 'Clerk Colvill' and 'Giles Colins' are descended?" She bolsters her affirmative answer by reference to the three ballads and to their Scandinavian and Bretan analogues.
Meanwhile, variants of the "Johnny Collins" form began to appear from American tradition, often from sections populated by the Irish and with Dublin substituted for London in the ballad's geography. Cox's A, B, and E versions from West Virginia are of this type, as are TBVa's A and B texts from Virginia and several of Samuel P. Bayard's collections in Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. Other representative collections, such as Sharp-Karpeles, Brown, Barry, Randolph, etc., seem to lack this more interesting version entirely.
Samuel P. Bayard has provided the fullest scholarly discussion of the ballad and its relationship to "Clerk Colvill," in his article "The 'Johnny Collins' Version of Lady Alice" in JAFL, LVIII (April-June, 1945), 73-103. After examining all details and analogues of the ballads concerned, he concludes (p. 100):
I believe that the foregoing comparison between these two ballads makes plain the fact that they tell the same story; and that it also shows the correspondence of the pieces in all the important details of that story to be amazingly close. Even more curious is the fact that the full Lady Alice version apparently outlines the events of a part of Clerk Covill which has completely disappeared from the British form of that ballad.
All appearances, then, seem to argue not only similarity, but identity for these two pieces. They suggest strongly that Lady Alice must be simply another offshoot of the ancient Clerk Colvill ballad-abbreviated and obscured in most texts, but still having one version ("Johnny Collins") that tells the entire ballad, story, as it is found nowhere else in English folksong. The obvious differences in rhythms and language between these ballads seem unimportant compared with their striking similarities in all other respects. No two ballads in English are more closely allied than the pair now under scrutiny.
Interesting and valuable as are these revelations of the interrelations, part proven, part still speculative, of the two ballads, we are not to conclude, I think, either that Child was wrong in his classification or that we must henceforth regard the several "Lady Alice" texts as a version or as versions of "Clerk Colvill." The exact degree of difference necessary to remove a given unusual version from its putative parent stock and constitute it a separate ballad in its own right is one of the subtlest and most difficult problems of ballad scholarship. It is hard to see how Child, who did not know the "Johnny Collins" type, could possibly have classified "Lady Alice" with "Clerk Colvill." Nor are we, who know the various "Johnny Collins" ballads, willing to concede more than that "Johnny Collins" is an extremely interesting intermediate type between Child, Nos. 42 and 85, suggesting the possibility that "Lady Alice" may have split off from the "Clerk Colvill" stock or from a common ancestor of the two. The facts are hidden in the dark backward and abysm of oral tradition. The typical "Lady Alice" or "George Collins" ballad, which has eliminated both the triangle and any clear suggestion of the supernatural, is certainly best regarded as a ballad distinct from "Clerk Colvill."
"George Collins." as distinct from "Johnny Collins," is fairly common in American tradition. TBVa printed six texts (not counting the two "Johnny Collins" texts) and five tunes from an available eighteen. Sharp-Karpeles (I, 196-99) print six texts or tunes. Cox (pp. 110-14) prints two (in addition to the three "Johnny Collins" texts). The Brown collection (II, 131-40, and IV, 69-74) prints or reports fifteen texts, many of them fragments, with nine times, but with no trace of "Johnny Collins." The Ozark collection (I, 139-40) gives only one text and tune, plus a parody. The ballad is missing from British Ballads from Maine. And so on. Except for the Gardner texts from Hampshire, mentioned above, the ballad does not seem to survive in recent British tradition, either in England or Scotland.
Since the ballad presents a fairly constant and standard text, the thirteen items more recently collected in Virginia may be adequately represented by the four texts and four tunes that follow. They follow Coffin's Story Type B or D, in which George Collins rides out one cold winter night, returns home, is taken sick, and dies. His sweetheart when she hears the news lays aside the silk on which she has been sewing, follows him to his grave, asks that the coffin be opened so that she may kiss his clay-cold lips. She answers her mother's efforts at consolation with a statement of her once happy but now inconsolable love for him. The ballad concludes generally with the "turtle dove" or "lonesome road" stanza, sometimes with both. The tunes are haunting and moving, but perhaps not musically distinguished.
The man's name is fairly constantly George Collins, but changes once to George Allen. (The John or Johnny version is not represented here.) The girl is generally Mary, but shifts to Mattie, Nellie, and Annie. An omitted text calls itself "The Dying Hobo," and begins with a stanza from that otherwise unrelated comic song. It is perhaps not chance that this text comes from a small railroad junction in Amherst County. Perhaps the deep emotion of the song invites the relief of parody, as in "Giles Scroggins." See TBVa, pp.352-53, and Ozark Folksongs, I, 140; also Coffin's fuller bibliography (p. 9).
Here is another instance where an old ballad has lost a supernatural content which has become confused and meaningless to more modern singers. It has, indeed, lost most of its narrative element and become largely a "folk lyric" or an amatory lament. Though it has somewhat changed character, it has not necessarily' deteriorated or lost effectiveness. Indeed, its condensation may well represent the artistic effort, conscious or unconscious, of some talented traditional re-creator whose product has commended itself to the perpetuation of the folk.
Since the ballads here printed all lack the supernatural element found in "Johnny Coliins" and in "Clerk Colvill," we may dismiss with the briefest of mentions the discussions of the specific supernatural character of the fairy woman, whether she is a mermaid, a banshee, a "washer at the ford," or some other form of elf-woman. Bayard, in the article cited above, argues in favor of the banshee (pp. 98-100), but he is effectively answered by Harbison Parker, in JAFL, LX (July-September, 1947),, 265 ff., who identifies the woman with Shetland-Orkney "silkie lore," and who questions the Irish tradition suggested by Bayard. Whatever her exact character, is is clear that death is the penalty for a mortal's unfaithfulness to such a one. More relevant to the "George Collins" variants given here is Child's mention (in another connection) of the old custom of a maid's making a shirt for her beloved. "A man's asking a maid to sew him a shirt is equivalent to asking for her love, and her consent to sew the shirt to an acceptance of the suitor" (V, 284). The usual second stanza of the ballad refers to this custom and indicates that the mourning mortal lady is betrothed to George Collins.
DD. [Little Turtle Dove] No local title. Collected by Miss Juliet Fauntleroy, of Altavista. Sung by Mrs. N. E. Clement, of Chatham, Va. Pittsylvania County. October 1931. Tune noted by Miss Fauntleroy.
1 "Don't you see that little turtle dove
Sitting in yonders pine,
A-mourning for its own true love,
Just like I mourn for mine, mine, mine,
Just like I mourn for mine?"