Lord Bateman- Tillett (NC) 1924 Chappell; Bronson 35
[From Folk-Songs of the Roaonke and Albemarle; Chappell, 1939. "Tink" Tillett was one of Chappell's best informants and in the early 1920s Tillett also gave ballads to the Brown Collection. Around 1940 Frank and Anne Warner began collecting songs from him. They write in a CD liner notes: ". . .we learned this song from Mr. C.K. Tillett in the town of Wanchese on Roanoke Island. On that part of the coast live a group of people known as bankers, because they live on the sand banks. A couple of generations ago, they were completely isolated from the world by the Albemarle, Currituck, and Pamlico Sounds which separate their strip of land from the mainland. Tink Tillett knew fishing (it was his trade) and the sea and its ways. He also knew many a fine song which he had learned as a young man from people whose memories stretched back to the 1840's, so he sang his songs with the pioneer flavor which is so interesting and, now, so rare."
The informant Charles Kitchen Tillett Sr. (b. August, 19, 1873 in Wanchese, Dare, North Carolina-- d. April 6, 1941 in Wanchese, Dare, North Carolina) was a musician and fisherman on Roanoke Island, NC. His father was Thomas Tillett (1831 – 1897 Nag's Head, NC) and mother, Sophia Frances Daniels (1832 – 1882). He was married in 1896 to Eleazor G. Gallop (1874- 1968) who also contributed songs and ballads to teh Warners and the Brown Collection. His sons Charles Ketchum (aka-Cliff) Tillett Jr. (1902 – 1985) and Richard (Dick) W. Tillett (1909 – ) also sang the family ballads and songs.
This is a rare southern traditional version of the early American Coverly (1810) broadside that was known in Maritime Canada and New England. (See Flanders A-K, and the earliest printing- Barry C).
Below are excepts from an article "Songs on the Salt Air" about the Tilletts the Warners. My grandfather Maurice Matteson met Frank Warner in 1937 in New York City and showed him Nathan Hicks dulcimer. That meeting put the Warners on the trail of the dulcimer and to Beech Mountain, to Nathan Hicks, to Frank Proffitt, to Tom Dooley and eventually to Tink Tillett.
R. Matteson 2014]
35. "Lord Bateman"- Chappell, 1939, Pp. 18-20. Sung by Charles Tillett, Wanchese, N.C., text, 1924; tune, 1935.
aI/Ly
1. In India lived a noble lord,
And he had riches beyond compare,
He was the darling of his parents,
Of the estate an only heir.
2. He sailed east and he sailed west,
He sailed till he came to the Turkish shore,
And there he was taken and put in prison
Where he could neither see nor hear.
3. The jailer had one only daughter,
A lady young and gay was she;
She stole the keys of her father's prison
And said, Lord Bateman I will set free.
4. She went unto the prison door,
She opened it without delay.
5. Have you gold or have you silver?
O, have you houses of high degree?
Or what will you give to this fair lady
If she'll from bondage set you free?
6. I have gold and I have silver,
I have houses of high degree,
I'll give it all to the fair lady
If she'll from bondage set me free.
7, I don't want your gold and silver,
Neither your houses of high degree;
All I want to make me happy,
All I want is your pure body.
8. Let's make a bargain and make it strong,
And seven long years it shall stand;
For you to wed no other woman
And I will wed no other man.
9. They made a bargain and made it strong,
Though seven long years it did not stand;
For he did wed another woman,
But she didn't wed another man.
10. Six long years was done and over,
And several long years was now to an end;
She packed all up her richest clothing,
Says, I'll go and seek a friend.
11. She sailed east and she sailed west,
She sailed till she came to India's shore;
Yet she never could be contented,
For her true-love she did inquire'
12. She inquired for Lord Bateman's palace,
At every corner of the street;
And she inquired for Lord Bateman's palace
Of every one she chanced to meet.
13. When she came to Lord Bateman's palace
She tingled loud at the ring;
None so ready as a brisk young porter
To rise and let her in.
14. Saying, Is this Lord Bateman's palace,
Or is the lord himself within?
O yes, replied the brisk young porter,
For he and his new bride have just walked in.
15. I wish I was back to my native country,
Across the seas there to remain.
16. Tell him to send me an ounce of bread
And a bottle of his wine so strong;
And ask if he had forgot the lady
That set him free from his prison bonds.
17. He stamped his foot upon the floor
And broke the table in pieces three;
Adieu, adieu to my wedded wife,
For this fair lady I'll go and see.
18. Then up steps the new bride's mother,
She being a lady of high degree;
Says, you've gone and married my daughter
And this the second wedding will be.
19. Your daughter came on a horse and saddle,
And she'll go back on a coach so free;
Your daughter came on a horse and saddle,
And she'[ go back on a coach so free.
20. He took Susannah by the hand
And led her in from room to room;
He changed her name from Susannah Fair,
And now she is the wife of Lord Bateman.
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Excerpts from: Songs on the Salt Air
By Kent Priestley
Husband-and-wife team Frank and Anne Warner spent much of the mid-20th century capturing songs that might otherwise have been lost. On the Outer Banks, they built relationships with local families and recorded tunes from faraway places and times long past.
You’re listening to the voice of Eleazar Tillett, recorded in the sitting room of her home in Wanchese, at the south end of Roanoke Island, in 1951. Picture her: She’s an old woman, with long, silver hair drawn back, sitting barefoot next to her sister, Martha. In one hand she grips a silver microphone. With some concentration, Tillett remembers the words to an old song:
It’s been a year since we met
We may never meet again
I have struggled to forget
But the struggle was in vain
For her voice lives on the breeze
And her spirit comes at will.
In the midnight on the seas,
Her bright smile haunts me still.
Her voice is worn but earnest, with a timbre akin to weathered wood, luminous with age. The song is “Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still,” which was written just before the Civil War. She’d learned it from her late husband, who in turn had learned it from another’s singing, likely when the song was at the height of its popularity. We have this moment, and several hundred others like it, thanks largely to the late song collectors Frank and Anne Warner.
Eleazar Tillett and her sister, Martha Etheridge, fit neatly into that former theory. The sisters, whose father had once been keeper of the Bodie Island Lighthouse, were born with the surname Gallop, heirs to a family line that they claimed stretched back to an Irish sailor who washed ashore on these sand islands.
Setting is one thing, but it’s a credit to the Warners — and a delight for us — that we still have something of the music of this unique place. It’s a sense that the Tillett’s son, Dick, ably expressed on a tape he later recorded for the Warners. His message is at once hopeful and wistful, a note of promise sounding in the midst of a fading way of life:
“Dear friends, this is the voice of Dick Tillett bringing you a collection of old songs and ballads that my dad, the late C.K. Tillett, used to sing. … Don’t expect too much of my singing. But to you who can sing, those who are talented with that priceless gift of song, why not memorize some of these oldie goldies and keep them going for old times’ sake — for they hold something sacred and beautiful of another day. Thank you.”