The Old Man In The North Country- Belden (MO-KY) 1906; Belden A; Reprinted Pound, 1922, as B version.
[Belden A, Ballads and songs collected by the Missouri Folklore Society; 1940, with music, informant was a student who is not named. Contributed by Miss Williams, 1903, with the notation that, "The person who sang it learned it in her girlhood from a hired man from Kentucky."
First published by Belden in Old-Country Ballads in Missouri (Journal American Folk-Lore, Boston, 1906, xix, 231-40, 281-99). It was "part of a collection made during the past three years by students of the University of Missouri."
In 1922 Pound reprinted as her B version: The Old Man In The North Country. Text brought to Clinton County, Missouri, from Kentucky. See H. M. Belden, "Old Country Ballads in Missouri," Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 19, p. 233. 1906.
R. Matteson 2011,2014]
THE OLD MAN IN THE NORTH COUNTREE- Kentucky version, collected in Missouri in 1903.
There was an old man in the North Countree,
Bow down
There was an old man in the North Countree,
And a bow 'twas unto me
There was an old man in the North Countree,
He had daughters one, two, three.
I'll be true to my love if my love is true to me.
There was a young man came a-courting
And he made choice of the youngest one.
He gave his love a beaver cape;
The second she thought much of that.
"Sister, O sister, let us go down
And see the ships go sailing by."
As they was a-walking by the saucy brimside
The oldest pushed the youngest in.
"Sister, O sister lend me your hand,
And I'll give you my house and land."
"What care I for house and lands?
All that I want is your true love's hand."
Down she sunk and away she swam
Till she came to the miller's mill-dam.
The miller ran out with his fish-hook
And fished the maiden out of the brook.
"The miller shall be hung on his own mill-gate
For drownding my poor sister Kate."