Sweet William - Bevier (MO) 1910 Belden D
[My title. From Ballads and Songs; Belden 1940 collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society. Belden's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
Fair Margaret and Sweet William (Child 74) [Belden- Notes from Ballads and Songs- 1940]
Child remarks that this is 'a favorite of the stalls,' a fact which perhaps accounts in part for its frequency in American collections. He gives one text (V 293-4) from Massachusetts. Since the completion of his work it has been reported from tradition in Yorkshire (JFSS II 289-90) and l)orset (JFSS III 64-6), and on this side of the Atlantic from Newfoundland (tr.SN 94-8), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 25-6), Ontario (JAFL XXXI 74, a fragment), Maine (BBNI 134-9), Vermont (VFSB 213-4), Virginia (TBV 221-39, Sharpl( I 139-40, 143-5, SCSM 103-5), West Virginia (FSS 65-77), Kentucky (JAFL XXIII 381-2, LT 94-9, FSKM 69-70, SharpK I 134-5, 142-3, besides a text introduced into a story by Julian Ralph in Harper's Monthly for July 1903),
Tennessee (SharpK I 132-4, 140-2), North Carolina (JAFL XXVIII 154-5, SharpK I135-9, 145, FSSM 2-3), Mississippi (FSM 87-90), Ohio (JAFL XXXV 340-2), Indiana (JAFL XITVIII 301-3), Illinois (TSSI 141-2), the Ozarks (OASPS 181-3), and Missouri (JAFL XIX 28I-2; w hether the text printed by Kittredge in JAFL XXX 303-4 is to be assigned to Missouri or to Indiana
is not clear). The rather puzzling opening scene in Child A and in many American texts is probably understood by singers of the ballad as an answer to sorne question asked by Margaret's father; it is specifically so presented in FSS E. Several texts-perhaps feeling that this opening is not intelligible- have dropped it, beginning with Margaret looking out of her bower window
and seeing William and his bride going by to church. Generally we are told that after this Margaret is seen no more, leaving it to be inferred that she dies of grief; but a good many texts imply, and some say, the Missouri-Indiana text in JAFL XXX 303-4, directly say, that she commits suicide by throwing herself down from her high window. The visit of Margaret's ghost, William's
report next morning of a dream that his bower was full of red (sometimes white) swine and his bride-bed full of blood, and the rose-and-briar ending are fairly persistent features of the story. The phrase 'with the leave of my (wedded) lady' of the Child versions has been expanded in some of the American texts for a formal asking of his lady's permission to visit the dead Margaret.
D. [Sweet William] No title given. Another bit seeured by Miss Hamilton in West Plains, in 1910, from a Mrs. Bevier, who thought that it perhaps belonged to 'Barbara Allen' in a sense it does, since the rose-and-briar ending is frequently attached to that ballad. But the names William and Margaret, and the first three lines, show that it is a memory of Fair Margaret and Sweet William.
Sweet William rode forth one May morning
All dressed in silver grey,
. . . .
. . . .
Lady Margaret she died it seemed but today,
Sweet William he died but tomorrow.
Lady Margaret she died of some pure love grief,
'William, he died of sorrow.
And out of her bosom grew a red rose,
And out of his a briar.
And they linked together in a true lover's knot,
For only lovers to admire.