Lord Bateman- Chandler (NC) pre1915 REC
[My date, my transcription. Fragment from Digital Appalachia; also the first eight verses (not complete) are found at the Celebration of Traditional Music Collection, Berea College Southern Appalachian Archives (3 minute video) http://sandbox.berea.edu/specialcollections/ac-vr-001-010-15/
Lord Bateman- Dellie Chandler Norton sings (1 minute- 2 stanzas) to a ballad singing class at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa NC. Dellie is from Madison County, North Carolina. September 13, 1976; http://dla.acaweb.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/Warren/id/1671/rec/3
Dellie Chandler Norton was born October 3, 1898 Madison County, NC and died September 14, 1993 in Marshall, Madison, North Carolina. Her father was Martin Van Buren Chandler (b. 1872 -1958), and mother Matilda Tilda Norton; Dellie married Hiram Ross Norton.
Dellie Chandler Norton was one of the heirs of ancient ballads that were sung by the Madison county ballad singers of Sodom which included Berzillia Wallin, Cas and Vergie Wallin, Evelyn Ramsey, Inez Chandler, and Doug Wallin. Recent generation singers include Betty Smith, Dillard Chandler, and Sheila Adams who is Dellie's great-niece. As with the Hicks/Harmon family of Beech Mountain, the Wallin/Chandler family learned the English, Scottish and Irish ballads brought to America by their ancestors to the North Carolina mountains the 1700s. It's safe to assume that some the ballad came to Virginia in the mid to late 1600s before they were brought to the mountains.
"On his journeys through Madison County in 1916 collecting music, Cecil Sharp had met one of the premiere families of traditional music in Mitchell Wallin. When one of Mitchell’s nephews, Lee Wallin (1889-1973), married Berzilla Chandler (1893-1986), two of the greatest musical families joined together (For more see Wiki- Wallin family)."
This ballad is considerably older than the Coverly ballad (1790) and Child L, Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman (1839), that have been printed many times in the US in the mid to late 1800s. The third stanza shows the draught-animal torture where Bateman's shoulder(s) is (are) bored and a "tree" (piece of wood) is inserted into pins so that he could pull a cart like an oxen.
R. Matteson 2014]
Lord Bateman- Dellie Chandler (Norton), Madison County, NC. Transcribed R. Matteson
1. Lord Bateman was a noble man,
. . . . . all alone,
He gathered all his gold and silver,
And vowed some strange land, he's go and see.
2. He sailed east he sailed west,
Over onto [the] Turkish sea,
The Turks they got him and put him in prison
Until his life was[1] almost o'er.
3. They bored a hole though his left shoulder
And tied him down unto a tree,
They gave him nothing but bread and water,
Bread and water, once a day.
4. The Turks they had but one fair daughter,
As fair a one as you'll ever see,
She stole the keys to her father's dungeon,
And vowed Lord Bateman she'd set free.
5. "Oh have you [a] house, a house and dwelling?
A house and dwelling, both free,
Would you give it all to [a] Turkish lady,
Who'd only set you free?"
6. Oh yes, oh yes, I have a house and[2] a dwelling
A house and a dwelling both free,
I'll give it all to a Turkish lady,
Who'd only set me free."
7. She tuk him by her lily-white hand,
And led him down, through the hall,
She drank a health to a pretty creature,
"Lord Bateman, how I wish you were mine."
8. And now they drawed their notes of love
. . . would stand
That he was to marry no other woman,
Unless she married another man.
[she stops singing]
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1. were
2. with a dwelling