The Two Sisters (Peter and I)- Ammerman (Michigan) c1901 Ballads and Songs of Michigan Gardner B
[Seeger's title. From: Ballads and Songs of Michigan by Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering; Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press; London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
Despite the poor visual quality of the music below, this version has a play-party type melody and the lyrics are quite different from the standard ballad. The ballad has been found in Kentucky (with standard lyrics) and Missouri as a play-party song. Under the title, Peter and I, the ballad has been recorded by Peggy Seeger. [Click to play: Peter and I- Peggy Seeger]]
R. Matteson 2011]
B. [Peter and I] Two Sisters- Recorded in 1931 by Mrs. Lillian Ammerman, Detroit, from the singing of her mother, who had learned the song about thirty years earlier, when she was teaching in Nebraska.
[Click to play: Peter and I- Peggy Seeger]
1. Peter and I went down the lane,
Down the lane, down the lane;
Peter and I went down the lane,
And sister came behind.
2 Both of us sisters loved him well,
As only I can tell.
3 Peter could love but one of us then,
So sister must go away.
4 Sister was bending over the well,
When splash, splash, in she fell.
5 Sister did scream with all her might,
But I did not help her plight.
6 Out of the well they dragged her then,
And laid her on the lawn.
7 In the black hearse we carried her then,
And buried her on the hill.
8 Peter and I were wed one day,
And oh, what people did say!
9 Sorrow and pain were in my heart,
Sharp as an arrow could be.
10. Peter then left for foreign parts,
And I'll die of a broken heart.