The Gallows Tree- Ditch (MO) 1900 Belden
[My title. From Belden to Kittredge; JAF, 1917 his notes follow. Also Belden, 1940.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS (Child, No. 95).
The first American copy to be printed was published by Child (5 :296), - "The Hangman's Tree," from Virginia by way of North
Carolina. Others have appeared in JAFL 21 : 56 (West Virginia, Reed Smith); 26 : 175 (from an Irish servant in Massachusetts); 127 : 64 (South Carolina, Reed Smith); and Miss Wyman and Mr. Brockway have included still another (with the music) in their "Lonesome Tunes," I : 44-48 ("The Hangman's Tree," from Harlan County, Kentucky). See also Reed Smith (JAFL 27 : 59-63; 28 : 200-202); F. C. Brown, p. 9; Cox, 46 :359 (JAFL 29 : 400). For England see Broadwood and Fuller Maitland, "English County Songs," pp. 112- 113 ("The Prickly Bush"); Sharp, "Folk Songs from Somerset," 5: 54-55 ("The Briery Bush"); Sharp, "One Hundred English Folksongs," No. 17, pp. xxiv-xxv, 42-43; "Journal of the Folk-Song Society," 2 : 233-234; 5 : 228-239.
Professor C. Alphonso Smith reports several Virginia variants, with specimens, and gives an extremely interesting account of the performance of the piece among the negroes of Albemarle County as "an out-of-door drama" some twenty-five years ago.[2] An account of a similar performance in England may be found in the "Journal of the Folk-Song Society," 5 : 233-334.? Compare the first version printed below. Professor Smith also reports a variant from Tennessee ("Summer School News," July 31, 1914 (I : I, No. 12, Summer School of the South).
1 Barry prints a tune from Ireland in JAFL 24: 337 (Hudson MS., Boston Public Library, No. 121).
2 Ballads Surviving in the United States, reprinted from the January, 1916, Musical Quarterly, pp. 10-12. See also the Bulletin of the Virginia Folk-Lore Society, No. 2, p. 5; No. 3, p. 8; No. 4, P. 7; No. 5, p. 8. 3 Here reference is made to Mary A. Owen's Voodoo Tales (published in England under the title of Old Rabbit the Voodoo), New York, 1893, pp. 185-189, especially pp. 188-189 (also in Philadelphia ed., 1898, Old Rabbit's Plantation Stories, same pages).
II. [The Gallows Tree]- The Hangman's Tree. Communicated by Professor Belden. Sent in by Mr. E. E. Chiles of the Soldan High School, St. Louis, as remembered by his wife from the singing of a housemaid, Elsie Ditch, on a farm near Plattin, Mo., in 1900. This agrees with Miss Wyman's text (and some others) in making the victim a man, and the rescuer his sweetheart.
1. "Hangman, dear hangman, do up your rope
For just a little while;
For yonder comes my father dear,
Who's travelled many a mile.
2. "Father, dear father, have you brought me the gold?
Have you come to buy me free?
Or have you come to see me hung
Upon the gallows tree?"
3. "Son, dear son, I've brought no gold,
Nor come to buy you free,
But I have come to see you hung
Upon the gallows tree."
And so on through mother, sister, brother, until his sweetheart comes:
4. "Hangman, dear hangman, do up your rope
For just a little while;
For yonder comes my sweetheart dear,
Who's travelled many a mile.
5. "Sweetheart, dear sweetheart, have you brought the gold?
Have you come to buy me free?
Or have you come to see me hung
Upon the gallows tree?"
6. "Sweetheart, dear sweetheart, I've brought the gold,
I've come to buy you free;
I have not come to see you hung
Upon the gallows tree."