Rich Man and Lazarus- Jarnigan (TN) c1917 Kirkland
[This has been Reprinted from Southern Folklore Quarterly, vol. II, no. 2., pages 65-80. Music and texts from Edwin Capers Kirkland and Mary Neal Kirkland, 1938. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
SINCE July 1, 1937, we have recorded on acetate or aluminum disks over 275 ballads and folksongs from east Tennessee and Western North Carolina.
This ballad was discovered in America by Campbell and Sharp at Flag Pond, Tennessee, in 1916, and later collected by the Virginia Folklore society at Barber, Virginia, in 1924. The Knoxville variant follows closely in outline and in language the other two American texts, but is nearer the text from Flag Pond. professor Davis's comment on the Virginia version is applicable to all three American texts: "The Virginia version differs entirely, except in bold outline of the Biblical story, from the Child versions. The difference of language is just about complete." Since the publication of the first two American texts the term "secondary ballad," has been used to designate the retelling of a ballad by one who derived his ideas, but very little, if any, of his phraseology, from the earlier text. Although ballad authorities are not unanimous in approving the term "secondary," it serves as a convenient label for such texts as the following.
"The Rich Man and Lazarus" was recorded July 5, 1937, by Mr. J. C. Jarnigan, night watchman at the University of Tennessee, who learned it about twenty years ago from a man at Morristown, Tennessee.
There was a man in ancient time,
Our Savior does inform us;
Pomp and grandeur was his crime:
He was very numerous.
He fared sumptous lie[1] each day,
Both purple and fine linen;
He eat and drink but scorned to pray;
He spent his life in sinning.
Poor begging Lazarus at his gate
To help himself unable;
Not one crumb would he give him
That fell from his rich table.
The dogs took pity and licked his sores,
More ready to defend him.
At last death came; the poor man died
By angel band attended;
Straightway fled to Abraham's bosom
Where all his sorrow ended.
The rich man died and was buried too;
But oh his dreadful station;
With Heaven and Lazarus both in view
He landed in damnation.
1. Sumptuously