Bluegrass Messengers

The Bramble Brier- (NY) Wehman's Songster 1890

[From Wehman's Universal Songster No. 28, p. 23. This print version has been studied by Steve Gardham (See: The Bridgewater Merchant: Appendix 3 at the bottom of this page). This was taken from tradition and reworked. According to Gardham: "Its 17 stanzas (printed in double stanza form all but the last) probably come from oral tradition and it is not as full as the Douglass version from early in the century which has 6 more stanzas. It does not relate closely to other American versions and does not appear to be the source of other oral versions recorded in the twentieth century. Its language very much smacks of a rewrite of a contemporary hack not long before this printing, though it follows the plot pretty accurately."

R. Matteson 2016]

The Bramble Brier

Near Blue-water a rich man dwelt,
With two sons and a daughter fair,
Who of his wife had been bereft,
Which caused their hearts much fear.
These young men journeyed across the sea,
To get riches was their aim,
But finding things not as they wished them to be
Returned with a factor to their domain.

Now this factor was tall and handsome,
Neat and genteel withal;
Their sister soon in love with him fell,
Quite unbeknown to them all.
One night as the lovers were talking
The young brother chanced to o'erhear
The secrets to each other they were telling
Those secrets to lovers most dear.

He resolved that their love should be blighted,
This love-making nipped in the bud;
On the morrow they'd take him out hunting
And secretly have him removed.
Bright and early the following morning
On their errand they quickly set forth,
Induced the young man to go with them,
On the mountains to have a day's sport.

They hunted o'er hill and o'er mountain,
Through valleys before quite unknown,
Till they came to a dense bramble brier,
Into which his dead body was thrown.
On returning home to their sister,
She questioned them as to the man,
And asked them why they did whisper,
Pray, brother, tell me if you can.

We lost him while we were out hunting,
Searched for him, but nowhere could find,
But you need not in this wise confront me,
We were thus forced to leave him behind.
Late that night she lay restlessly tossing,
At her bedside a vision appeared,
His eyes full of tears to o'erflowing,
And his form all covered with blood.

He said, my dear, give over your weeping,
It is folly for you thus to grieve;
Your cruel brothers have sought to kill me,
And that die I may, I do believe.
Deep in a ditch from view quite hidden,
Thickly with briers and thorns overgrown,
There was the scene of the bloody encounter,
There sought to kill me, there I was thrown.

She roamed far over hills and high mountains,
Through lone valleys to her quite unknown,
Till she came to the dense bramble brier,
Where they killed him and there he was thrown.
His handsome cheeks were all marred and bloody
His manly form quite cold in death.
Fondly she kissed him, with ardour exclaiming
She would be true to him while she had breath.

When she returned and met her brothers,
They questioned her as to where she had been,
To all of which she made a quick answer,
She the young man's dead body had seen.
You have brutally murdered my own true love,
Committed a sin of deepest dye.
Just punishment you'll receive from above,
I feel that your end is nigh.

Soon after the brothers went forth to swim,
And were met by a mighty wave;
By it were engulfed in its surging foam,
And both found a watery grave.

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The Bridgewater Merchant: Appendix 3 (Steve Gardham)

The Wehman Brothers' version seems to have had little or no influence on oral tradition, indeed it seems to have come from oral tradition itself. It could easily ultimately derive from the Stevens-Douglass Manuscript of Western New York. The Stevens family came from New England to Wyoming County in 1836 bringing their ballads with them.

The Wehman version appears to have been rewritten by a printer's hack or amateur poet, perhaps from the recitation of a source singer who had some of the verses intact but only remembered the outline of others so they needed to be rewritten. What is perhaps curious is that the rewriter has taken note that some verses in the source version have the abab rhyming pattern, and has attempted to follow this, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully and sometimes not at all.

The poet or the printer has decided to present the ballad in double verses and there is some evidence in the longer version in the Stevens-Douglass Manuscript that this is the original form, but as all other versions are presented in quatrains I will deal with the verses individually in this way. However, because the Wehman version has 17 verses, either the printer or the poet has indicated that there is a missing quatrain before the final quatrain to make up the 9 double verses. If this was the choice of the rewriter it begs the question, why didn't he also make up a penultimate verse. The answer to this is probably that the source had insufficient material on the plot at this point and so the poet was happy to leave the gap.

The first 3 verses follow closely enough the majority of other versions:

Wehman:

The fourth verse is quite different to the majority of versions, particularly in the second and fourth lines. However other versions do have the same second line but not the rhyming fourth line. Here is the Stevens-Douglass verse close to that found in most versions where this verse occurs:

Belden, A version:

Wehman:

It would appear that this verse was extant in other places at one time before the Wehman printing, or the Wehman version influenced others slightly. Either way the 3rd and 4th lines are unique to Wehman although the 3rd line rephrases what is expressed in earlier versions.

The following 2 verses are completely rewritten but still follow the story using none of the phraseology of other versions.

Stevens-Douglass:

Wehman:

The first 2 lines of the next verse in Wehman in later versions occur later on in the ballad to describe the sister's journey in search of the victim's body, as they do also in Wehman.

This is a condensation of 2 verses in Stevens-Douglass:

The next verse is one of the most stable throughout all versions where it occurs, particularly the last line and the rhymes. Note the abab consistent rhyming pattern:

The following verse is similar to its Stevens-Douglass equivalent but the rhymes in lines 2 and 4 have been changed. What is interesting is the attempt to retain the abab rhyming pattern hunt/confront which is in Stevens-Douglass hunt/affront. The rhyming of find/behind is unique to the Wehman version.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

The only significant difference in the next verse is that appeared at the end of line 2 is normally stood a better rhyme for blood:

Once again in the next verse we have the gist of earlier and later versions' equivalent but the rhyming is different and unique to Wehman. Other versions have the same rhyming words as Stevens-Douglass given here.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

What is also different with the Wehman verse is that at that point in the story the victim is not yet dead, die I may, an idea presented uniquely by the Wehman poet, possibly because the attack only occurred that day.

This idea is backed up in the next verse, the victim's description of the attack, which is almost word for word the description by the narrator of the actual attack earlier in the Stevens-Douglass version.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

In the next verse, quite different from earlier versions in which she goes to find his body, we get some repeats of phrases from previous verses. This verse is found in some later versions in pretty much the same words.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

In all versions that have it the next verse is pretty consistent. Yet again though the Wehman poet has changed the wording and rhyme.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

From this point onwards the Wehman version gets progressively more different to the text of other versions. For this reason I quote the double verse printed by Wehman:

Apart from the first 2 lines which paraphrase the equivalent verses in Stevens-Douglass, only the general mood of the Wehman version has any links with other versions.

Stevens-Douglass:

Only a handful of versions, mostly American, have preserved the verses describing the fate of the two brothers and most of these, including the two longest, Stevens-Douglass and Gardner and Chickering, tell us that they embark aboard ship, are washed overboard in a gale and are drowned. In the Wehman version they simply go for a swim and are engulfed by a wave and are drowned. Although the same rhyming words are used in lines 2 and 4 of the final verse as in other versions, Wehman's poet has endeavoured to rhyme lines 1 and 3 in keeping with the majority of verses in the earlier versions, and particularly the final 3 verses in Stevens-Douglass.

Wehman:

Stevens-Douglass:

For the sake of completeness I include the following; only very few versions even hint at the fate of the sister and Wehman's version is not one of them. In one of them, possibly harking back to the Decameron, she pines away and dies. Another version has her predict both she and her lover will lie in one grave. In a very few versions the two brothers are cast in prison, tried, found guilty and hung.

Having looked closely at the evolution of many ballads over several centuries and their interaction in print and oral tradition, I have come to the conclusion that in most cases where there is significant textual difference between versions, i.e., whole sentences being reworded in many instances in the text, this can be put down to deliberate rewriting. Furthermore the most likely candidates for the rewriting are those best placed to do so, the amateur poets who supplied the texts to the printers. I use the term amateur very loosely because of course they were usually paid for their work. In the British Isles in the nineteenth century the average reward was a shilling per ballad.