Quaker's Courtship- Mrs. Charles Muchler (MI) c.1872 Gardner B
[My date. From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan- by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
Mrs. Charles Muchler was born December 15, 1864 and died July 16, 1953. Since she learned this as a child I've dated this 1872.
R. Matteson 2017]
176 THE QUAKER SONG
For discussion of an Irish folk song somewhat similar to this dialogue song see Barry, JAFL, XXIV, 341-342. For a text and references see Mackenzie, p. 380. See also Brewster, JAFL, XLIX, 247, and Eddy, Nos. 119 and 120.
B. "The Quaker's Courtship." Sung in 1934 by Mrs. Charles Muchler, Kalkaska, who learned the song when she was a child.
1. "Father sent me here a-courting,
O, O, O![1]
And in truth I am not sporting,
O, O, O!
2 "You get a job that's good and steady,
Tiddle um-a-dum, tiddle um-a-dee.
And tell your father I'm not ready,
Tiddle um-a-dum, tiddle um-a-dee."
3 "I've a ring worth forty shilling;
You can have it if you're willing."
4 "I want neither ring nor money;
1 want a man that'll call me honey."
5 "Must I leave with my heart broken?
Must I leave without one token?"
6 "I guess your heart is made of paper,
And I'll never marry a Quaker."
7 "Hast thou no feeling, to keep me kneeling,
My love revealing, day after day?"
8 "O hain't you tired of kneeling, your love revealing?
O stop your squealing, day after day."
9 "I'm in love with another, perhaps it is your brother,
Go home and tell your mother and think no more of me."[2]
________
1. This refrain is repeated in alternate stanzas.
2 Stanza 9 is sung to the same tune as stanza 8.