Stand Back, Stand Back- Lee (NC) 1927 Brown L
[My title, none given. From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, II, 1952 and Volume IV, music. Listed as 30. The Maid Freed from the Gallows (Child 95).
Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
For preceding records of this ballad and its relation to theories of communal origin, see BSM 66, adding to the references there given New Hampshire (NGMS 117-18), Kentucky (BTFLS in 95), Tennessee (SFLQ XI 129-30), North Carolina (FSRA 35-6), Florida (FSF 295-9), Arkansas (OFS I 146-8), Missouri (OFS I 143-4, 145), Ohio (BSO 62-4), Indiana (BSI 125-7), and Michigan (BSSM 146-8 — this last being the "golden ball" form, rare in this country). In only half of the North Carolina texts is it a woman that waits to be freed from the gallows ; in versions B C E K L it is a man, and in D the sex is indeterminate. D is the only one of our texts in which the song has been turned into a play.
L. [Stand Back, Stand Back.] A two-stanza fragment secured by Julian P. Boyd from Minnie Lee, one of his pupils in the school at Alliance, Pamlico county, in 1927. The quotation marks are the editor's, conjectural.
'Stand back, stand back, pretty little Johnson!
Stand back for a great while.
See if you see your mother a-coming,
A-coming many a mile!'
'Have you brought my gold and silver?
Have you paid my way?
Have you come for to see hanging?
For hanging you shall see.'