Love Has Brought Me To Despair- R. Welch (WV) 1859 Cox
[From Cox, Folk Songs from the South, 1925. His extensive notes follow. Cox failed to recognized that Love Has Brought Me To Despair is based almost entirely on "Constant Lady and the False Squire," a broadside of c. 1686.
R. Matteson 2017]
144 LOVE HAS BROUGHT ME TO DESPAIR
This is a remarkably full version of the English song "A Brisk Young Sailor " —that song which, in an abbreviated form, is known as "There is an alehouse in yonder town" (or, in this country, as "There is a tavern in the town"). For English texts, longer or shorter, see Bebbington's broadside No. 193 (Manchester); Kidson, Traditional Tunes, pp. 44, 46; Leather, The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire, p. 205; Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 94; Sharp, English Folk Songs, n, 40; R. Vaughan Williams, Folk-Songs from the Eastern Counties, p. 9; Butterworth, Folk Songs from Sussex, p. 14; Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols, p. 92; Kidson and Neal, English Folk-Song and Dance, p. 57; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, 1, 252; 11, 155, 158, 168; in, 188; v, 181, 183, 184, 188.
The usual opening of the song (when it does not begin at once with the alehouse, stanza 4 of the present text) is as follows — to quote the Bebbington broadside:
A brisk young sailor courted me,
He stole away my liberty,
He stole my heart with a free good will,
I must confess I love him still.
Instead of this, the West Virginia version has three quite different stanzas. These seem to be adapted from some form of the old ballad entitled "The Famous Flower of Serving-Men" (Child, No. 106), in which we find:
2 I was by birth a lady fair,
My father's chief and onely heir,
But when my good old father dy'd,
Then was I made a young knight's bride.
5 My servants all from me did flye,
In the midst of my extremity,
And left me by my self alone,
With a heart more cold then any stone.
19 My father was as brave a lord
As ever Europe did afford;
My mother was a lady bright,
My husband was a valient knight.
One English text {Folk-Song Society; n, 158) agrees in part with the West Virginia song at this point, having as stanza 1:
Her father bin a noble knight:
Her mother bin a lady bright:
I bin an only child of her
False lover brought me to despair.
Stanzas 8-10 of our West Virginia text recur in the English broadside ballad "Sheffield Park" (Catnach; Jackson & Son, Birmingham; Gillington, Eight Hampshire Folk-Songs, p. 14), which is the direct ancestor of "The Butcher Boy" (see p. 430, below). These stanzas, however, are all found in some other versions of "A Brisk Young Sailor." The opening stanza of "Sheffield Park" runs as follows:
In Sheffield Park O there did dwell
A brisk young lad, I loved him well,
He courted me my love to gain,
He 's gone and left me full of pain.
The concluding stanza in the West Virginia text, though found in several of the English versions, probably does not belong to this piece. It is a ballad commonplace. In "The Forlorn Lover," for instance, a seventeenth-century broadside lament, which shows some elusive resemblance to our song, we find:
O dig me a grave that is wide, large, and deep,
With a turf at my head, and another at my feet!
There will I lie, and take a lasting sleep,
And so bid her Farewel for ever. [1]
A similar stanza, or stanzas, occurs also in several versions of "The Twa Brothers" (Child, No. 49) and of "Sir Hugh" (Child, No. 155).
"A Brisk Young Sailor" has significant points of contact with the seventeenth-century broadside (Pepys, v, 217) "An excellent New Song, called Nelly's Constancy; or, Her Unkind Lover" (Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 791).
For references see Journal, xxix, 170; Broadwood, Journal of the Folk-Song Society, v, 185.
"Love has Brought Me to Despair." Communicated by Mrs. Walter Parker, New Haven, Mason County, July 29, 1916. She writes: "I have copied this song from a quaint old manuscript dated February 20, 1859, and signed Robert B. Welch. He was a Civil War veteran and died several years ago. I have copied it exactly, except all the s's were z's in the manuscript and most of the words began with capitals."
1 My father he is a wealthy knight,
My mother she is a lady bright,
And I their child, their only heir,
But love has brought me to despair.
2 I was courted by a wealthy knight,
Who at my beauty took delight;
He courted me both night and day,
Until my heart he did betray.
3 But now he has left me all alone,
A discontented life to mourn.
I'll mourn for him — no other one —
As long as I have life to mourn.
4 There is a tavern in the town,
Where goes my love and there sits down;
He takes strange girls upon his knee,
And is not that a grief to me?
5 A grief to me, I'll tell you why,
Because they have more gold than I;
But gold will melt and silver fly,
But constant love will never fly.
6 Down in the meadow, I've heard some say,
There is a rose blooms night and day;
Down in the meadow she quickly ran,
Picking flowers as they sprang.
7 She picked of purple, she picked of green,
She picked of every kind she seen,
She picked of red, she picked of blue,
But little thought what love could do.
8 Now these green flowers must be your bed,
The heavens is your coverlet.
Almighty, mourn, O mourn for me,
mourn unto eternity !
9 Now when they found that she was cold,
They went to her first love and told :
"I am glad she is dead, I wish her well,
1 hope her soul may land in hell."
10 O cruel man, what 's that you say?
She has wished you many a happy day,
Whilst on your bosom she breathless lay,
When your poor soul be tost away.
11 They dug her grave both wide and deep,
A marble slab laid at her feet,
A turtle dove sit on her breast,
To let him know she has gone to rest.
1 Bagford collection (Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 233, stanza 11); entered in the Stationers' Register, March 1, 1675 (Eyre, Transcript, 11, 499; Rollins, Index, No. 907).