Bluegrass Messengers

 Sweet William & Fair Ellen- (NC) c1921 Brown 4B(2)

[Generic title from the Brown Collection; 1952, version 4B(1) in Brown Vol, 4 (music) one of 11 Versions. Brown includes music from Greer and Abrams housed at Appalachian State University- available online (some recordings).

This is version B(2)in the Brown Collection Vol. 4, general date 1921, no singer, just a single stanza with music from Sutton. Bronson No. 33.

R. Matteson 2011, 2014]

3. Earl Brand (Child 7)

This admirable specimen of the tragic ballad seems to have held  its place in the favor of ballad singers better in America than in  the old country. Greig reports it from Scotland, to be sure, both  in the Folk-Songs of the North-East and in Last Leaves, and Ord  has it in his Bothy Songs; but the absence of any mention of it  in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society seems to show that it is  extinct in English tradition. On this side of the Atlantic it has  been reported as traditional song in Newfoundland (BSSN 7-8), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 9-11), Maine (BBM 35-40), Virginia  (TBV 86-91, SharpK I 21-3, 25), West Virginia (FSS 18-19), Kentucky (SharpK i 24-5), Tennessee (FSSH 36-7, BTFLS viii  64-5), North Carolina (JAFL xxviii 152-4, SharpK 1 14-19, SSSA 45-6, BMFSB lo-ii, SCSM 115-16), Georgia (SharpK I 19-20),  Mississippi (FSM 66-8), Florida (SFLQ viii 136-8), the Ozarks (OMF 219-21, OFS I 48-9), Indiana (BSI 37-8), and Illinois JAFL IX 241-2). 'The Soldier's Wooing,' reckoned by some as a secondary form of "Earl Brand,' is dealt with later in the present volume. The American texts follow in general the tradition of Scott's form of the ballad ('The Douglas Tragedy' of the  Minstrelsy, Child's version B), clinging in particular to the '"buglet horn" that "hung down by his side," recognizable through  a variety of transformations. Old Carl Hood has vanished entirely. Most of the North Carolina versions, and also that from  Georgia, have introduced a new element, the question of the hero's  origin. *When scornfully described by the girl's father as "a steward's son" (transformed in texts A, C, F below into "Stuart's  son"), he proudly declares that his father is a regis king and his  mother a Quaker's queen. Possibly this has been picked up, and  corrupted, from the English stall ballad of 'The Orphan Gypsy Girl,' the opening line of which in Cox's West Virginia version  (FSS 335) runs: "My father is king of the gypsies, my mother is  queen of the Jews." 

B(2) 'Sweet William and Fair Ellen.' Contributed by Mrs. Sutton. Score only, taken  down at Lenoir, Caldwell county, 1921 or 1923. Mrs. Sutton rarely, if ever,  gives the name of the singer, but it may be assumed to be Myra, i.e., Mrs. Miller.  The beginning shows some melodic relationship to the Johnson 3C, Byers 3D,  and Prather 3D(1) versions.

For melodic relationship, cf. *BMFSB lO, first four measures.