Sweet Willie- Edith Walker (NC) 1939 Brown E
[From Brown Collection of NC Folklore Volume 2, Ballads, 1952. Their (Belden and all) notes follow. The two stanzas from Edith Walker's MS aren't standard "Little Sparrow" stanzas (see 7Ua. Young Ladies) although stanzas 3 could be related. Stanza 4 is related to several "Died for Love" songs: 1) it's an extra stanza sometimes found in Butcher Boy; 2) it's frequently found in 'Maiden's Prayer," 3) it's an extra stanza found in "My Blue-Eyed Boy."
R. Matteson 2017]
Brown Collection Notes:
104 The Sailor Boy
This song was printed by Catnach and Such and probably by other ballad printers in England in the last century and is widely known and sung. See BSM 186, and add to the references there given Maine (MWS 56-9), Virginia (FSV 108-11, 118), North Carolina (BMFSB 24-5, SFLQ v 146), Arkansas (OFS I 300), Missouri (OFS I 296-300), Ohio (BSO 97-103), Indiana (BSI 269-70), Illinois (JAFL XL 235-6), and Michigan (BSSM 94, blended with 'The Butcher Boy'). Barry listed it among the ballads in his collection from the North Atlantic States but did not print it. Like other items of the folk song of unhappy love its content is likely to vary; with its central images of the girl bidding her father build her a boat and later demanding of the sailors she meets news of her sailor boy may be combined motives from 'The Butcher Boy,' 'Little Sparrow,' 'The Lass of Roch Royal,' or an elaborate preliminary story may be provided as in version L below.
E. 'Sweet Willie.' From the manuscript book of songs of Miss Edith Walker of Boone, Watauga county. Four stanzas, in the first of which she demands news from the captain and in the second bids her father build her a boat. The other two belong to the 'Little Sparrow' tradition:
3 I wish I were a little bird,
A darling, darling little bird ;
Right to Sweet Willie I would fly
And there I'd lay me down and die.
4 Girls, oh, girls, you'd better mind;
A good true boy is hard to find.
When you find one that's just and true
Change not the old one for the new.