Seven Horsemen- Thomas (VA) 1940 Davis CC
[From Davis- More Traditional Ballad from Virginia. Davis's notes follow Foss. It's interesting to see that Davis is aware of the Smith's (Thomas P. Smith and his brother) submitting a version already published in Brown as a "new" version. However, Davis gives credence to some of the the unusual offerings of the Smiths in his 1960 book.
The Morris version is similar to the dozen versions from the Shenandoah region in Virginia. George Foss who collected an excellent version in 1961 from Robert Shiflett, wrote about the region From White Hall to Bacon Hollow. Also see article at bottom of this page: Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Victoria Morris: From Bacon Hollow to Pennsylvania Avenue by Phil James.
R. Matteson 2014]
George Foss, From White Hall to Bacon Hollow excerpts:
From White Hall to Bacon Hollow is about a place and about its culture and people. I have granted myself the author's indulgence of selecting a title significant in its double meaning. White Hall to Bacon Hollow is a stretch of twisting country road, Virginia route 810, crossing the line between Albemarle and Greene Counties.
The earliest settlers of importance to the area were members of the Brown family. The patriarch of the Virginia Browns was Benjamin Brown, who began acquiring land in Albemarle County in 1747. He amassed six thousand acres of what was to become known as Brown's Cove. Included in these holdings was a tract patented to him by King George III in 1750.
It is of importance at this point to mention Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., who was a collector of ballads and folksongs specifically of Virginia. He was not a collector in the same sense as Sharp, that is a field worker and face-to-face gatherer of songs. He was more in the mold of Francis James Child, the great collector-editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, that is, he served to gather and organize, to sift and evaluate the field work of numerous amateur, hobbyist and professional collectors. As early as 1929 he produced Traditional Ballads of Virginia; in 1949 he published Folksongs of Virginia and More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, all three under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society. A courtly gentleman “of the old school,” he was professor of English literature at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a great span of time. It was professor Davis who was Paul Clayton Worthington's teacher at the University during the 1950's and inspired Paul's interest in balladry and folksong.
Two later collectors who visited and worked in the White Hall-Bacon Hollow area were Richard Chase and professor Winston Wilkinson whose manuscripts are now kept by the University of Virginia. They were the first collectors to record the songs of some of the finest singers in the region, Ella Shiflett and Victoria Shiflett Morris as early as 1935.
Excerpt of Davis' notes:
In Virginia the ballad is reasonably rare. TBVa, printed four variants, of five available, and two tunes. Of five items (not counting two overlapping ones) more recently collected and listed in FSVa, four are here presented, all of them with tunes. The one omitted item contributed by R. E. Lee Smith and Thomas p. Srnith, though long resident in Virginia, comes ultimately from North Carolina and is printed in Brown, II, 29-3c.. It is also a good full text available in the Virginia collection.
Bronson (I, 126-27) finds "a marked formal cleavage" in the musical tradition of "this impressive ballad." He divides his forty tunes into six groups of one, two, fourteen, seven, three, and thirteen members, respectively. His fourth group of seven variants consists of texts and tunes collected in Virginia by either Sharp and Karpeles, Winston Wilkinson, or the present editor. "Group D," he says, "is a comparatively small gathering of Virginia variants with mid-cadence consistently on the flat seventh. All are authentic Dorian tunes. The group as a whole begins to display marks of the omnipresent 'Gypsy Laddie' scheme, which appears much more clearly in the next group." TBVa B he classifies ln this Group D, while TBVa D appears in his final "aberrant" Group F, of the four new tunes here given, he would certainly find both AA and BB highly distinctive specimens in any grouping. Incidentally, DD below is a later recording and transcription-from the same singer as TBVa D (Bronson's Group F, No. 40), interestingly varied and now verifiable. of the tunes below, AA belongs in Bronson's Group D, of which it is a fine example; CC shows a similarity to Bronson's Group A, Ia; and DD falls clearly into Bronson's-Group F.
CC. "Seven Horsemen." Collected by Miss Alfreda M. Peel. Sung by M. H. Thomas, of Salem, Va. Roanoke County. September 16, 1940. Tune noted by Miss Lee Robertson Peters. The tune seems less interesting than the other three, but worth recording.
1. It was early in the month of May,
When the meadows they lie green,
He hung his bugle around his neck
And so went riding away.
2. He rode till he came to Fair Ellender's hall,
He blared both loud and shrill;
"Asleep or awake, fair Ellender," he cried,
"Arise and let me in."
3 He mounted her on his milk-white steed,
Himself the iron gray,
He hung his bugle around his neck
And so went riding away.
4 He had not rode far from town,
When he turned himself all round,
And who should he spy but seven horsemen
Come tripping over the ground.
5 "Let yourself down, fair Ellender," he cried,
"And take my steed in hand,
Till I go back to yonder spring
And fight the seven horsemen."
6 She stood till she saw her seven brothers fall,
Her father she could not revere,
"So hold your hands, sweet William," she cried,
"Your licks are most severe."
7 She drew a white handkerchief from her side
To wipe poor William's wound,
And the blood came twinkling from his side
As red as any wine.
8 He mounted her on his milk-white steed,
Himself the iron gray,
He hung his bugle around his neck
And so went riding away.
9 He rode till he came to his mother's hall
And blared both loud and shrill;
"Asleep or awake, dear mother," he cried,
"Arise and let me in.
10 "Listen, dear sister, come bind up my head,
You'll never bind it again."
Sweet William he died from the wounds he received
In fighting those seven horsemen.