Old Bangham- Adelaide Hemingway (Wash. DC) 1939
[From Our Singing Country, pp. 149-150; Alan and John Lomax. The Lomaxes published a version by Adelaide Hemingway of Washington D.C., 1939. They quote her:
"My grandmother learned to sing 'Old Bangham' from her mother, who had traveled out to the Sioux Indian country from her girlhood home in western Massachusetts. She was a Longley, and the song must have been brought from England when the family came to Massachusetts in the early 1630's. In 1866 my grandmother sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in one of the last clipper ships to come to the Far East. She brought the song to the dry plains of North China, to her new home at Kalgan, the gateway to Mongolia, where she sang it to her six children, lulling them to sleep many a time as they swung along in a mule litter or jolted over the rough roads in a Peking cart.
As a little girl I also was sung to sleep by the minor tones of 'Old Bangham' as our cart went bump, bump, over even rougher Shansi roads which brought us gradually nearer to supper and bed in a willow-shaded Chinese inn or at home in our mission compound." (p.149)
R. Matteson 2014]
OLD BANGHAM- Adelaide Hemingway of Washington D.C., 1939
Old Bangham did a hunting ride,
Derrum, derrum, derrum,
Old Bangham did a hunting ride,
Kimmy qua,
Old Bangham did a hunting ride,
A sword and pistol by his side,
Derrum, Kimmy quo qua.
He rode unto the riverside,
And there a pretty maid he spied.
"Fair maid," said he, "will you marry me?"
"Oh, no," said she, "for we can't agree."
"There lives a bear[1] in yonder wood,
He'll grind your bones and suck your blood."
He rode unto the wild boar's den,
There lay the bones of a hundred men.
Old Bangham and the wild bear[1] fought,
By set of sun the bear was naught.
He rode unto the riverside
And there a pretty maid he spied.
"Fair maid," said he, "will you marry me?"
"Oh, yes," said she, "for now we agree."
1. boar, throughout